


A Shilling's Worth of Magic

by chiiyo86



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Canon - Manga, Case Fic, F/F, F/M, Future Fic, Haunting, Murder Mystery, Polyamory, Spiritualism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-25 07:40:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 11
Words: 55,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12031275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiiyo86/pseuds/chiiyo86
Summary: April 1893. Finding him exhausted, Elizabeth manages to convince Ciel to go on a vacation. Along with their friend Sieglinde, they decide to visit the city of Bath for a restful few days. But a ghost story and then a murder come and disturb that plan. When Ciel is asked for his help on the investigation, Elizabeth and Sieglinde are dragged into it too, and the three of them find themselves enmeshed in a dark mystery in which the dead take centre stage.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanting to try my hand at this ship for a while, and here is the result! With bonus casefic because that's how I roll. This was a labor of love and I hope you'll enjoy it. Thanks a lot to [the_rck](http://the-rck.dreamwidth.org/) for her help!
> 
>  **A word of warning:** although it's not obvious from the summary, this story deals with the spoilers from chapter 129 and on. Spoiler character doesn't show up, but is heavily mentioned and is plot relevant.

Years of experience at managing her difficult fiancé had taught Elizabeth when to be pushy. She used to be terrible at this—led by her earnest desire to make him happy, she would get excessive and only end up making him cross. Now eighteen and on the cusp of womanhood, she could look back at her younger self and shake her head at her well-meaning clumsiness. 

The trick was that some issues were better left alone; anything to do with that terrible month when she had thought him lost was never to be touched, for any reason. He didn’t like to reminisce about their childhoods and wouldn’t talk about his dead family. Any other topic was open territory, even though he might sigh and grumble along the way. She’d learned not to be afraid of his moods, because the worst of times were when he completely shut her out. 

“Would you look at this weather? It’s splendid,” she told him over afternoon tea. Out the window she could see the evergreen oaks’ foliage, gilded with sunlight, dance to a light breeze. “Doesn’t it make you want to take a break?”

“Hmm.”

Ciel was peering into his cup as though its content were a subject of greater interest to him than Elizabeth’s conversation. He didn’t seem to be dismissing her on purpose, though, but rather as if he were absorbed in some other matter. His face was drawn, the one eye he didn’t hide behind an eye-patch underlined with shadows, and his mouth pulled down the way it did when exhaustion and preoccupations made him irritable. 

Elizabeth contained a sigh and looked down at the teacup she held in her own hands. It was an exquisite piece of Wedgwood bone china, painted with a garland of delicate pink roses. Although her memories of her aunt and uncle were getting blurrier with the years, she remembered that this was the set her Aunt Rachel had reserved for close family. 

“This tea is delicious,” she said, even though she had barely tasted it. It was the colour of dark amber and a fine wisp of smoke rose from it. “I’m guessing this is Sebastian’s choice.”

“It’s a blend of Assam and Nilgiri Indian black teas,” Ciel said. His tone was absent-minded, but this was the most she’d got from him in half-an-hour. “I’m glad you’re enjoying it.”

He looked at her, then, and smiled, a thin sort of smile that barely stretched his lips. Nevertheless, Elizabeth felt her breath catch at the sight.

“I’d enjoy anything as long as I shared it with you,” she said truthfully, which made him blush faintly and avert his eyes. “You know what I would enjoy very much? I would like for us to go on a trip.”

His smile vanished. “ _Lizzie_ ,” he said in his put-upon voice, but she knew that as long as he still called her ‘Lizzie’ he couldn’t be too annoyed with her. “You know I have a lot of work. I can’t leave on a whim.”

“We wouldn’t go far! And only for a few days. I need some time away; this winter has been rough and drawn-out.”

She couldn’t say that she thought _he_ needed it, because that was the best way for him to refuse to even think about it. Only the weak got overworked, and he abhorred any perceived weakness in himself. He’d always been tight-lipped about his job as Her Majesty’s watchdog, but over the years she’d managed to drag bits and pieces out of him, and she knew that his last case had been long and difficult. In its immediate aftermath, he’d been struck down by a bout of the flu and was only getting over it. This didn’t stop him from working himself as hard as any healthy man, but he was so stubborn that there was no chiding him about it.

“Please, Ciel?” she tried again. “We could go to Bath! It’s not very far from London and I’ve never been there. It’s not as fashionable as it used to be, so we wouldn’t be bothered by the crowd. I know how you hate a crowd.”

“I’ve been once when I was younger,” he said. He looked about to say something else but shut his mouth and only shook his head.

“We could go somewhere else, if you have another destination in mind.”

“I never said I agreed to this,” he said, looking over at her with a narrowed eye.

She tilted her head. “But will you think about it?”

He rolled his eye but nodded, and she clapped her hands in delight. Saying that he would think about it was almost as good as an agreement, coming from Ciel. The seed was planted, and she only needed the patience to let it grow. 

\---

A fortnight later she was in London for the Season, staying with one of her aunts on her father’s side, and mulling over the fact that her plan for a trip in Bath with Ciel hadn’t advanced a bit. He hadn’t had any time for her—or time for anyone else, as his Funtom Company was launching a new toy and this was monopolising his whole attention. When she had sent him a message he’d replied that he was still thinking about it. This was neither a good nor a bad sign, but the more time she let pass, the more she grew afraid that her project would only fade into limbo. 

And she had anticipated it with such pleasure! She’d imagined them going on leisurely walks together in Bath and its surroundings. She’d imagined being daring enough to take his hand, watching the blush spread across his cheeks, and how it would feel when he curled his fingers around hers even as he looked away. They could go to the theatre, and maybe even dancing. Ciel wasn’t overly fond of dancing, but he would go a few times to please her. Who knew, perhaps she could drag him to the baths—at the inappropriate thought her cheeks always grew very warm and she had to distract herself with something else.

She occupied her time going to dances and dinner parties and tried not to think about how much more she would enjoy them if Ciel chose to attend with her. Maybe, when they were married, she would have more leverage to make him do those things, but he would never be the type to find enjoyment in social happenings. He’d always been very shy. There was, however, one thing to do in London that always provided her with unmitigated pleasure, and that was to visit her friend Sieglinde. 

Wolfram, Sieglinde’s imposing butler, opened the door with his usual brusqueness at her knocking. Only when he saw that Elizabeth was the one outside did he become more affable. 

“The young lady is in her lab,” he told her in heavily accented English and then turned his back on her, letting her find her own way.

Fortunately, Elizabeth had been here often enough that this was no trouble to her, and she was used to Wolfram’s manners or lack of thereof. Sieglinde’s lab was situated at the back of the house on the ground floor, and Elizabeth made her way through the narrow corridors. She found her friend puttering about her lab, just as Wolfram had said she was. The room was a relatively small one, filled with all sorts of objects. A strange contraption made of cogs and wheels and thin metal arms hung from the ceiling above a padded long chair; the walls were lined with shelves crowded with books, vials, and glass jars, except for the back wall that held a black board filled with lines of unintelligible symbols and a curtained window that let some light filter in. Her desk was cluttered with piles of loose sheets of paper and more books, and even the floor was used as a storage space for documents and leather-bound volumes, as well as for glass cylinders and metal pipes whose purpose Elizabeth couldn’t divine. She entered the room, careful not to step on anything important. 

Even though Wolfram hadn’t announced Elizabeth, Sieglinde didn’t seem surprised by her presence.

“Lizzie!” she exclaimed, clear delight in her voice even though she didn’t divert her eyes from the vials she was manipulating. “Please, come in. Have a seat; anywhere is fine. I just need to finish this experiment.”

Finding a seat in Sieglinde’s lab was a task that was easy in theory but difficult in practice. There were a few chairs in the room, but they were already burdened with piles of documents, books, and used pencils, and even if the lab looked to be in a state of perpetual chaos, Elizabeth didn’t dare disturb anything in case there was some underlying order that only Sieglinde was aware of. She finally perched on the edge of a chair that had some space left for her, next to a shelf on which sat a stuffed rabbit whose design Elizabeth recognized as Funtom’s. She wondered whether this was a gift from Ciel or if Sieglinde had bought it herself.

“I’m testing for a certain chemical reaction,” Sieglinde explained as she deftly manipulated her vials. “This is fascinating, really. I don’t know if I’ve ever told you about it—”

She launched herself into an explanation that Elizabeth could only understand in parts. Not that it mattered much, because she loved watching Sieglinde work and could have done it for long stretches of time. The way Sieglinde’s hands fluttered as she talked, the look of intense concentration and pleasure on her face. She still wore her dark hair outrageously short, using pins to keep her bangs off her face instead of ribbons as when she was younger. Her dress was a strange mix of various European fashions, probably one of Nina Hopkins’ creations, and her too small feet were trapped in a metal contraption destined to help her walk—the spider legs she had used a few years ago had the unfortunate tendency to knock things down and dent walls. Sieglinde didn’t look like anyone Elizabeth knew, and would probably outrage good society, but she didn’t receive many visitors beside Elizabeth, Soma, and Ciel—and Ciel’s visits were generally utilitarian in their purpose. 

“Now, see!” Sieglinde exclaimed and whirled around to show Elizabeth a vial filled with a bubbling solution. “See that reaction? I was right!”

Elizabeth applauded, happy for her friend even if she was unsure of what she had been right about. 

“But aren’t you always right?” she said with just a hint of teasing.

Sieglinde propped the hand that she wasn’t using on her hip and tilted her head. “Indeed I am. But I’ve been corresponding on the subject with a certain Professor James Fogg, from the University College of North Wales, and this is going to be so satisfying to have the evidence to shut him up. But enough about me!”

Sieglinde put her vial away, jotted down a few notes on a scrap of paper, and then walked up to Elizabeth, throwing her arms around her as soon as she was within reach. Elizabeth leaned against her for a moment, closing her eyes. Sieglinde smelled of something acrid, probably some chemical product, but it was so very rare for Elizabeth to be hugged by anyone now that she was almost an adult. 

Sieglinde’s hair brushed against Elizabeth’s cheek as she pulled away. “How are you enjoying the season? Any amusing anecdote to share?”

“I’m enjoying it just fine, although there has been an unfortunate lack of amusing anecdotes, I have to say. Lady Mary, Lord Highmore’s youngest daughter, is getting married to the son of a London banker. I’m afraid this doesn’t sound very exciting to you.”

“I don’t see any great use in marriage,” Sieglinde said in an offhand manner. “I’m not very likely to get married myself, and, as long as the Queen supports my work, I don’t care much anyway. She was there yesterday, by the way.”

Elizabeth followed her friend’s look and saw the teacups and saucers abandoned on a round marble pedestal table. It still amazed her how nonchalant Sieglinde could be about her regular visits from the Queen, but at the same time it worried her a little bit. She had met Her Majesty on a few formal occasions, and the sovereign had always given the appearance of an amiable old lady. But she made Elizabeth faintly uncomfortable for some reason; there seemed to be something cold and calculated about her. Privately, Elizabeth didn’t like that her beloved fiancé and the person she’d come to think of as her closest friend were both under the Queen’s thumb. 

“Would you like me to introduce you to some parties in town?” she offered spontaneously, feeling guilty that she’d never thought about it before. “We could go together.”

Sieglinde regarded her sceptically. “Are you sure this is wise? I don’t know how well I would fit into London’s good society.”

“Well…” Elizabeth knew that her friend was right. Even if Sieglinde made use of the manners that Sebastian had forced upon her, would she have fun in an environment that wasn’t very open to women discussing science? “You know what? I’m planning a trip to Bath with Ciel. Would you care to join us?”

“I’ve heard of the waters of Bath,” Sieglinde said thoughtfully, a gleam of interest in her eyes. “They seem to have interesting properties.”

“They could be good for you.” Before she could help it, Elizabeth glanced down to Sieglinde’s metal-bound feet. She blushed as soon as she realised what she’d done. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

Sieglinde burst out in joyful laughter and flung her arms around Elizabeth. “Oh, Lizzie,” she said, her breath tickling the sensitive skin of Elizabeth’s neck. Elizabeth squirmed a little in her friend’s embrace. “Don’t worry about offending me, ever. I know how good your heart is, and I could never take offense in you caring about me. Tell me about that trip of yours. Have you warned Ciel of it?” she added snidely.

Elizabeth batted at her shoulder, pretending to push her away without actually breaking her hold. “Of course, I did. He’s pushing himself too hard, and he’s in dire need of a vacation. I said I wanted to go to Bath for a few days, and he didn’t say no.”

“I take it he didn’t say yes either.”

“Not exactly,” Elizabeth admitted. “But I will convince him. So, will you come?”

Sieglinde let go of Elizabeth to better look at her. “If you’ll have me, then I’ll be glad to come, but I think you should ask for Ciel’s opinion on the matter first.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’ll agree. He’ll be glad not to have to entertain me all the time.”

Sieglinde conceded the point with a chuckle, and they moved the discussion to other topics. Sieglinde rang Wolfram for tea—and made him take away the dirty cups from the day before—and they occupied the next few hours in pleasant conversation. Elizabeth learned more about Sieglinde’s current experiment and her rivalry with Professor James Fogg from the University College of North Wales, and Elizabeth amused her friend with her impersonations of various matrons she’d met at dinner parties. 

As she was leaving, she thought again about her offer to Sieglinde. She had conceived this trip as something Ciel and she would do together, and yet she couldn’t make herself mind the idea of Sieglinde coming with them. Would Ciel mind? It was sometimes hard to tell whether he liked Sieglinde or merely tolerated her for her usefulness—but then, it was nearly impossible to tell how Ciel felt about people beyond irritation. On an impulse, she asked her driver to take her to Ciel’s townhouse. She didn’t know if Ciel was there, but Soma would be, and she hadn’t seen him in a long time. The day was still young, so she could allow herself another visit before her aunt would be expecting her. 

It was Soma rather than Agni who opened the door, but that wasn’t surprising—the prince often got so excited about visitors that he liked to welcome them himself.

“Lizzie!” he exclaimed effusively, ushering her inside. “Please come on in, Agni made some delicious pastries for—well, I can’t eat them all by myself.”

“Oh, but I’m invited for dinner tonight. It wouldn’t do to spoil my appetite.”

“Please, you must have a taste. Lady Elizabeth is here!” he called, pitching his voice loud enough to be heard in an adjacent room but not shouting the words as he usually did. “I’m taking her to the parlour.”

A few muffled words of indistinct agreement reached them, and Soma led Elizabeth to the parlour that Ciel used for close acquaintances. It was a pleasant room, decorated in blue and cream, and at this time of the day sunlight poured from the two windows on the side of the room that overlooked the front of the house. The prince was smiling and chatting happily as ever, but Elizabeth noticed a certain subdued quality to him that was only apparent because she’d come to know him well over his years of friendship with Ciel. For one, he seemed to be making a deliberate effort not to speak too loudly. 

“Is something the matter?” she asked gently as they sat down on rosewood chairs but then was distracted when Sebastian entered the room with a trolley. She gaped openly at him for a second before taking a hold of herself. “Sebastian? What—Is Ciel here?”

Her eyes darted around, anticipating her fiancé coming from behind one of the chairs or maybe jumping out of the hearth. 

Sebastian smiled and brought a finger to his lips. “You must keep quiet, my lady,” he said. “The young master is taking a nap at the moment.”

“Is he?” This didn’t sound like Ciel, and Elizabeth’s heart fluttered from anxiety. “What’s wrong?”

“He’d come to London for a business transaction,” Soma explained, with a grave expression that didn’t alleviate Elizabeth’s worries. “But, early in the afternoon, as he was getting ready for an appointment, he fainted in Sebastian’s arms. We convinced him to cancel his appointment and—”

“I did not _faint_ ,” an irritated voice interjected, and everyone’s eyes shifted to the doorway where Ciel now stood, glaring at them.

He wore a wine-coloured robe and his hair was mussed from sleep, but the scowl was firmly set on his face, and he seemed to be daring anyone to make another comment about his supposed faintness. Soma shrivelled under that dark look, but all those years of weathering the worst of Ciel’s moods had made Sebastian immune to it.

“Really, my lord,” the butler chided his young master. “Must you always be so difficult? Even if your mind won’t accept that you need the rest, your body knows it.”

Ciel hissed irritably at him. “It’s a wonder one can find any rest with all this agitation. Lizzie,” he said more gently, turning to Elizabeth. “If concern for my health has made you come here, then I can assure you—”

“I only came to visit Soma,” she said, interrupting him. “I didn’t know you were in London, and I certainly didn’t know you’d fainted!”

“I did _not_ —” He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I only got dizzy for a second, and then everyone made a fuss about it.”

“I fail to see where you make the distinction, young master,” Sebastian said.

“Fainting implies a loss of consciousness!”

“When your eyes closed and you fell into my arms, I did infer a loss of consciousness. But, of course, my lord knows better.”

Ciel darted a murderous look at his butler, but Elizabeth came to him before he could blow up from anger. 

“Ciel,” she said and took his hands. 

It startled him, and he looked at her with a strange vulnerability in his eye. They were of a height now, which meant Ciel wasn’t very tall for a man, although he was only seventeen and might still grow up. Elizabeth was wearing heels at the moment, and he wore slippers, so she stood a little bit taller than him. 

“Whether you fainted or merely got dizzy,” she said, “you have to admit that this isn’t normal. Please, please, consider your health and listen to your friends. You wouldn’t want me to worry, would you?”

“Of course not,” he mumbled, looking embarrassed. 

“Then would you think again about the trip to Bath I wanted us to make?”

He groaned. “Is it what this is all about? I said I would think about it, didn’t I? I have been giving it some thought, but I’ve also been busy.”

“Ciel,” Soma put in, “a vacation sounds like just the thing you need! I think this is an excellent idea.”

“My lord can’t work if he… gets dizzy at the drop of a hat,” Sebastian added.

Ciel frowned and withdrew his hands from Elizabeth’s grip to cross his arms on his chest.

“Have you all decided to conspire against me? Very well, I shall go to Bath with you, Elizabeth.” He flopped down on a chair and peered curiously at the trolley Sebastian had brought in. “Chocolate madeleines, hmm? That will do.”

Elizabeth stifled her impulse to throw herself at Ciel’s neck—he was irritated, and any manifestation of her delight would be taken as an expression of triumph and only kindle the fire of his annoyance. She sat across from him, next to Soma, and waited for Sebastian to serve tea. Then she suddenly remembered what she had offered Sieglinde. She hesitated to ask Ciel so soon after he’d been forced to yield on the matter of the trip, but he was unlikely to react more positively to a last-minute addition. 

“Ciel?”

An elbow propped on the arm of his chair, he was resting his chin in his hand, and his eye was only half open. He looked about to fall asleep again at any moment. 

“Hmm?”

“Do you mind if I ask Sieglinde whether she wishes to join us?” Before he could reply, she added in a rush, “She doesn’t go out a lot and travels even less—you remember how she wanted to see the world when she was a prisoner of her village in Germany? The waters in Bath are supposed to possess excellent healing properties, and they would be good for her and her feet. Also, she would love to have a chance to examine a sample. And—”

“Lizzie,” Ciel said, and she stopped talking at once. He smiled, an expression that combined wryness and affection. “I don’t need any more convincing today. I’m leaving it all to you, so invite whoever you want.”

Then he closed his eye and rested his head against the back of his chair. Soon enough, his breathing had slowed down to a sleeping rythm. 

“But he’s not tired at all, nooooo,” Soma said to Elizabeth in a low voice, leaning over the arm of his chair to better whisper to her without disturbing Ciel’s slumber. “He’s so terribly stubborn.”

Elizabeth pressed her fingers to her mouth to contain a giggle. “You’re a good friend to him,” she told Soma, who beamed at her. “Not many are.”

She asked him if he would come along—Ciel _had_ said to invite whoever she wanted—but Soma declined, explaining he had much to do in London. The way he said it made Elizabeth imagine some kind of romantic entanglement, but she managed to keep her curious enquiries to herself. Soma’s private life was his own. She turned her thoughts to the upcoming trip, feeling excitement already start to build up. This was going to be such a delightful experience.


	2. Chapter 2

The road to Bath was full of twists and turns as it wound over wild downs until the city suddenly burst on view, nestled along a range of hills that bounded it on the north and east. The eye was drawn to the sight of the venerable Abbey, rising from the bottom of the vale, and the outline of the river Avon as it meandered amid the buildings. Elizabeth and Sieglinde both cried out in delight when their carriage came in sight of the city and leaned out the windows on their respective sides. Ciel, who was familiar with the way Bath looked when one approached from the east, only released a sigh of relief that the sight meant their journey was almost over and leaned back in his seat.

“Look how adorable it is!” Elizabeth exclaimed. “Sieglinde, don’t you think it’s lovely?”

Sieglinde was too engrossed in her contemplation of the landscape to answer, leaning far enough out of the window that a bump on the road might make her fall. She was sitting across from Ciel, and he had all the leisure to observe the look of rapture on her face. Her eyes sparkled, and her mouth was half-open from amazement, her cheeks reddened from the wind whipping at her. _You remember how she wanted to see the world when she was a prisoner of her village in Germany?_ Elizabeth had reminded him the other day. Years ago, Ciel thought, he had indeed promised her the world.

“Sullivan, you’re going to get dust in your eyes,” he said brusquely, but she paid him no more mind than she had Elizabeth. 

“What kind of minerals do you think these hills hold?” she asked instead, as if Ciel or Elizabeth were qualified to answer her. 

“Sit down before you fall off,” Ciel said. “We’re almost there.”

She eventually settled back down. “Ciel, Elizabeth told me you’ve been here before?”

“It was a long time ago. Vacations with my family. I wasn’t much of a rock collector, if that’s why you’re asking.”

“Well, from what I heard this city offers a variety of entertainments that are better suited to adults than children,” Sieglinde said with a sly half-smile.

It wasn’t her words but the way she said them that made Ciel’s cheeks heat, and, glancing at Elizabeth, he saw that she had reddened too. Damn Sieglinde and her gift for making everything sound so—unsavoury. He hadn’t found it in himself to object to Elizabeth inviting her to come along, but he was now wondering if he shouldn’t have. Elizabeth on her own could be exhausting, but with Sieglinde there, the two of them were bound to drive him mad. To think that everyone had pretended that this trip was for the sake of his health—ha!

By the time they entered the city, it was a little after noon, and the sun was high in an almost flawless blue sky. The temperature was pleasantly mild and there was little wind. Their carriage parked in front of the lodging they were renting for the occasion, one of the terraced houses laid out in a sweeping half-circle that was named ‘the Royal Crescent.’ The assembled buildings were made of sandstones, and the plainness of the ground floor only served to emphasise the single row of ionic columns supporting the superior cornice. Cast-iron railings protected the front of the houses, mirrored by the railings encircling the wide lawn facing the inner part of the crescent, across the broad carriage-road that had led them here. When they got out of the carriage they were welcomed by a fine view of the city, with the opposing hills standing in the background. 

A second carriage parked behind them, which contained Sebastian, Wolfram, and Paula, Elizabeth’s maidservant, along with their luggage. The door to their rented house, number 8, opened, and an older woman came out. She had a handsome face, patterned with very fine lines around her mouth and eyes and dark hair hidden under a cotton cap trimmed with a ribbon of pink silk. 

“Welcome!” she said with a ready smile. “You’re here a little bit earlier than I thought.”

Ciel flicked a look at Sebastian. “Take care of it, Sebastian,” he said, and his butler nodded in acknowledgment.

Ciel watched as Sebastian explained to the woman, probably the housekeeper assigned to the house, that they would only use their own servants. The woman looked a little confused at this early dismissal.

“But—” she said, waving her hands uncertainly. “I got the house all ready for you.”

“And we’re very grateful for it,” Elizabeth assured her warmly. She gave Ciel a look, as though she wanted him to say something. When the woman disappeared inside the house, Elizabeth murmured furiously to Ciel, “Why are you dismissing this poor woman? Do you intend for Sebastian, Paula, and Wolfram to take care of everything? Paula is only a maid, and Wolfram—” She trailed off, maybe lacking the necessary words to describe Wolfram’s competences as a housekeeper.

“Sebastian can handle it,” Ciel said.

“You put too heavy of a burden on Sebastian’s shoulders.”

The dismissed housekeeper exited the house again with a bundle of clothes. Sebastian thanked her again and then started to direct Wolfram and Paula to take care of the luggage as soon as she was gone. As if he knew that Ciel and Elizabeth were talking about him, he glanced in their direction, and, when his eyes met Ciel’s, his lips formed a smug little smile.

“Believe me,” Ciel said. “I don’t burden him nearly enough for what I pay him.”

Elizabeth looked taken aback by his words, but before she could formulate a reply, Sieglinde had sidled up to them and interjected, “What are you two muttering about? I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry enough that I could eat one of our horses.”

With that keen hearing of his, Sebastian had caught her words and he said, “Once we are done with the luggage, I’ll prepare a luncheon for you, my lady. I’m thinking of cold roasted chicken and ham, pickled salmon, and cold boiled round of beef as a first course; as a second course, a dish of little trout from the river with new potatoes, fresh greens, with toast over and poached eggs; as dessert, a custard pudding, gooseberry tart, Highland cream and butter. Does it sound to your liking, my lord, my ladies?”

Sieglinde was looking at him with wide eyes, her mouth gaping. _In a moment, she will be drooling_ , Ciel thought with wry amusement. Elizabeth, for her part, looked like the enunciation of this elaborate menu had made her rather anxious for some reason. 

“Oh, you don’t have to overexert yourself, Sebastian,” she said, wringing her hands. “Something very simple will do.”

Sebastian’s brow furrowed slightly, and Ciel thought his butler was affronted by Elizabeth’s worries. “I can assure you, my lady, that I won’t be overexerting myself in the slightest.”

“But—”

“Don’t insist, Lizzie, or you will vex him,” Ciel said, trying hard not to snap at her. He had only managed to doze off a little in the carriage, and he could feel an ache forming behind his forehead. In truth, he didn’t feel very hungry. “Sebastian, I think I’d rather take a nap than have lunch at the moment. I’ll go to my room.”

Elizabeth and Sieglinde cast him almost identical looks of worry, but he ignored them. He was there to rest, wasn’t he? Then he would rest, and everyone would just have to deal with it. Sebastian, understanding the implied order, bowed and signalled for Ciel to follow him inside. With eerie accuracy, he led Ciel to the master bedroom on the first floor.

“Wake me up when it’s time for afternoon tea,” he told Sebastian as the butler helped him relieve himself of his travelling attire, his shoes, and his eye-patch. 

He lay down on the comfortable mattress, pressing his face into the soft pillows. God, he was so tired. He hated to admit that his friends had been right, but it felt heavenly to know that he had nothing scheduled, no urgent matter calling for his attention for the next few days. 

Sebastian said something, but Ciel was already too far gone to parse the words. 

\---

He woke up an indeterminate amount of time later, feeling disoriented. It was sunny outside, so it couldn’t be very late, but he had no idea of the hour and couldn’t hear any voices inside the house. He rubbed his eyes groggily and blinked, savouring the rare opportunity to use his two eyes by examining the bedroom he’d slept in. The bed he was sitting on had a frame of brass, and when Ciel’s feet hit the floor he could feel a thick Oriental rug. The window was draped with brocade, their moss green colour matching the colour of the bed’s cover and pillows, as well as the paint on the wood-panelled walls. All the furniture, from the night table, chairs and central table, to the wardrobe and small bookcase, were made out of a light walnut wood, and on the walls hung a few painted landscapes, probably of the countryside around Bath. Ciel rang for Sebastian, and retied his eye-patch himself while he waited for the butler.

“Young master?”

“What time is it? And where are Elizabeth and Sieglinde?”

“It’s five past three, my lord. Lady Elizabeth and Lady Sieglinde went out for a walk after lunch, about half-an-hour ago. They should be back soon.”

“All right, thank you.”

“Were you in need of anything?”

“I guess I will look around the house. I’ll entertain myself until it’s time for tea. You just go back to what you were doing.”

After Sebastian had left, Ciel put on some shoes and started exploring the house. It was quite a bit smaller than the townhouse he owned in London. The first floor held the master suite that he currently occupied, as well as two other bedrooms separated by a shared bathroom, and a small library. The top floor, accessible through a narrow staircase, was the servants’ quarters. On the ground floor the front hall led into a first parlour, which was connected to a second, larger parlour through a pair of sliding pocket doors in polished mahogany. The second parlour was itself connected to the dining room, and the kitchen, with its adjacent scullery and pantry, was accessible from both the second parlour and the dining room. As he explored, Ciel noticed several switches on the walls that told him that the house was newly equipped with electricity. 

Ciel’s wanderings eventually took him to the library, where he decided to stay while waiting for tea to be served. It was a narrow room, with bookshelves filling entirely the two longer sides; an oval table stood at the centre of the room with a few chairs, and at the far end was a window with a bronze velvet tufted armchair placed under it to better enjoy the daylight, and a brass world globe on a walnut stand sitting at the chair’s feet. Ciel ran his fingers along the books’ spines, only half looking at the titles while his attention was also on the view through the window, the pristine green lawn and the line of trees that bounded it on its other end. Small clusters of people walked along the lawn’s railings in the leisurely pace suited to an afternoon stroll, but Ciel couldn’t see Elizabeth and Sieglinde.

Now that he wasn’t sleepy anymore, he felt restless, his skin crawling with the nagging feeling that there was something he should be doing, somewhere else he should be. How did people occupy their vacation time? He couldn’t very well nap all the time, could he? And here he was, an avid reader, standing in a library, and he didn’t even know what he was in the mood for. With a certain amount of irritation at himself for his indecisiveness, he grabbed a volume at random and went to sit in the armchair.

He flipped the first few pages and read the title: _Treasure Island_ by Robert Louis Stevenson. _His_ favourite book. _I am but half a person_ , Ciel thought, and he threw the volume away in disgust. On the verge of bursting out of his skin from nervous energy, he was about to call for Sebastian in the hope of distracting himself, when he heard new voices float up the stairs—it sounded like Sieglinde and Elizabeth were back. Feeling suddenly and inexplicably lighter, Ciel jumped to his feet and made his way downstairs. 

The girls both had rosy cheeks and eyes sparkling from the exercise, and they chatted animatedly with each other while Sebastian helped relieve them from their coats and hats. They didn’t immediately see Ciel as he went down the stairs, and he didn’t call for them but merely watched them for a moment, noting the happy glow about them. He could feel a strange kind of peace progressively settle down inside him at the sight. 

Then he cleared his throat to get their attention, and said, “It looks like you enjoyed yourself.”

“Ciel!” Elizabeth beamed at him. “We would have asked you to accompany us, but we didn’t want to disturb your sleep.”

“It’s all right. I’m well-rested now, but I am all but starving.”

Recognizing it as his cue, Sebastian bowed, and said, “Young master, Lady Elizabeth and Lady Sieglinde, if you will take a place in the second parlour I will be there in a second to serve the afternoon tea.”

The second parlour, the informal one, was a cheerful, well-lit room decorated in scarlet and blue tones. The furniture was well-worn, as Ciel noticed scratches on the corners of the multiple tables and chairs, and signs of wear on the chairs’ and the sofa’s upholstery, but it was made of solid dark oak wood of undeniable quality. Delicate porcelain knick-knack crowded the smaller tables and the chimney mantle, and a few photographs showing various streets of Bath decorated the walls. Elizabeth and Sieglinde took the sofa for themselves while Ciel sat down in an armchair, crossing his legs and knitting his fingers over the top knee. 

“Did you have a nice walk?” he asked.

The girls rushed into the opening he’d provided them and started to describe everything they had seen and how cute it all looked while Ciel listened to them, his chin resting on the knuckles of his left hand. Sebastian had unobtrusively started to serve tea and an assortment of small crustless sandwiches, scones, madeleines, financiers, and caramel truffles. The faint jasmine scent from the tea soothed Ciel’s nerves, as did the chatter from his fiancée and his friend. 

“And we made some friends, too!” Elizabeth told him.

Ciel lifted an eyebrow. “Already? Weren’t you gone for an hour, no more? You didn’t waste any time.”

“We ran into them as I was looking for one of my gloves. They’re siblings—Flora and Andrew Collins—and they’re from London, enjoying a vacation as we are. Their father trades in cotton. They invited us for tea tomorrow.”

“I think they must be a few years older than you and Elizabeth,” Sieglinde said, licking caramel off her fingers. “They’re twin brother and sister.”

Elizabeth bit her lip and shot Ciel a quick, furtive glance, but was wise enough not to say anything. Ciel couldn’t help a hot flare of exasperation at her reaction—did she think him so fragile that a simple word would make him crumble? Those new friends of Elizabeth’s could be twins, or regular siblings, or highway bandits for all that Ciel cared. 

“I can’t wait to make their acquaintance,” he said, a bit more acerbic than he would have liked. 

Elizabeth and Sieglinde caught it, and shared a glance, but thankfully didn’t push the subject. After tea, they all retired in the library and this time Ciel managed to relax enough to immerse himself into a volume of poetry. At some point, at the corner of his eye, he saw Elizabeth pick up _Treasure Island_ from where it lay discarded on the floor after Ciel had thrown it. She gently smoothed some crinkled pages, stood still for a moment as though a particular passage had caught her eyes and then put the book back on a shelf. 

\---

The next day was just as sunny as the previous one, and as soon as they’d taken their breakfast Elizabeth and Sieglinde wanted to go on a morning walk. This time Ciel was pressed to accompany them, and he had little choice but to comply under the double assault. Although, truth to be told, he eventually had to acknowledge to himself that the fresh air was pleasant and helped with the restless feeling that still gnawed at his insides. 

They walked up Upper Church Street to Catherine Place, a fine open area that stood at the rear end of Brock Street and then pushed to the Circus, a circular space surrounded by large townhouses bearing the classical columns and the local butter-coloured stones characteristic of the architecture in Bath. In its centre was a garden, and a lot of people were milling about the place despite the relatively early hour, most of them seemingly on a morning stroll as they were. Women with parasols and promenade dresses hung on the arms of men in morning coats, and the space was buzzing with gay chatter and laughter. Being functionally blind in one eye, Ciel was forced to pay close attention to his surroundings to avoid bumping into anyone, and the effort cut him from conversation with Elizabeth and Sieglinde. The crowd’s presence felt oppressive and he dearly wished he were somewhere else.

“Why don’t we—” he started, leaning toward his companions, but his shoulder was jostled before he could finish his sentence.

He gritted his teeth in irritation, ready to give the offender a piece of his mind, but the person in question, a young woman in her twenties, didn’t give him the time before she started babbling, “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, my lord. I don’t know what—”

She had unruly blond hair that escaped from under her cap in wild strands, and nervous brown eyes. Ciel thought those eyes were lingering a little too insistently on his face, and, assuming that she was taking in the patch on his eye, he interrupted her before she could embarrass them both, “I’m quite all right; there was no harm done, I assure you. A good day to you.”

Then he marched away, forcing Elizabeth and Sieglinde to quicken their pace to catch up with him. When they had, he expressed his wish to find a less crowded place and they concurred. Sieglinde was drawing looks because of the contraptions on her feet; she didn’t seem to mind, but for some reason Ciel did, and his patience with other people was wearing thin. They continued their walk toward less peopled areas of the city, but even then, Ciel was grateful when they came back to the house and found a little peace and quiet. The perspective of meeting Elizabeth and Sieglinde’s new friends in the afternoon felt unattractive, but his efforts to talk his way out of the obligation were fruitless. 

“But it was for you, not for me, that the invitation was meant,” he tried to argue.

“I told them about you, of course!” Elizabeth said. “They wouldn’t invite me without my fiancé. They seemed really interested when I said that you were the head of Funtom’s Company.”

“You can’t stay in the house the whole afternoon,” Sieglinde said. “And it won’t be half as fun without you.”

It was unclear whether it was meant as a jab, although Sieglinde looked earnest enough. Ciel thought for a moment to plead fatigue, but he wasn’t sure it was worth them giving him that worried look again, as though they expected him to shatter on the floor like crystal. He’d had a whole childhood of people being worried about him and he hadn’t enjoyed it at the time either, but then he hadn’t had the option of fending off the attention. 

“All right then,” he said with a sigh. “I shall have tea with Mr and Miss Collins.”

The Collins brother and sister had their lodgings on St James Square, which was actually not far behind the Royal Crescent. It was a highly-ornamented area with a beautiful shrubbery in the midst of it; a serpentine walk wound around it, enclosed by a light iron railing. The house itself was an elegant building of Georgian architecture, built in the ubiquitous local yellow stone. Ciel, Elizabeth, and Sieglinde were welcomed at the door by a fresh-faced housekeeper who led them into the parlour. There they met their hosts, Andrew and Flora Collins. Even if Ciel hadn’t known about them being twins, the young man and woman were very obviously siblings: they had the same flamboyant red hair and milk-white skin, the same slender built. Their eyes were the colour of clear water, which gave Ciel the curious impression that they were not seeing what was in front of them, but rather watching something else beyond the veil. They were both fashionably dressed—Andrew Collins in a plaid three-piece suit and a green necktie, and his sister Flora in a bustle dress of emerald green taffetas. 

“We’re so glad you could make it,” Miss Collins said with a warmth that Ciel found disproportionate given the newness of their acquaintance. “Elizabeth, this dress looks adorable on you. Sieglinde, I didn’t have the opportunity to tell you yesterday how much I love how you’ve done your hair. This looks like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

The compliment brought an unexpected blush to Sieglinde’s cheeks. Ciel had got so used to the way her hair looked over the years that it didn’t register to him anymore, past the shock when she’d first cut it. He didn’t think he’d ever told her it looked good on her. 

“Lord Phantomhive,” said Collins, the brother, advancing toward Ciel with his hand forward. Slim like his sister, he was nevertheless tall and athletic, and his grip was firm. Ciel accepted the hand, shaking it cautiously.

“Mr Collins,” he said in greeting. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“The pleasure is mine, I’m sure. My father is greatly appreciative of your sense of business.”

“You mean he’s jealous of it,” Miss Collins said laughingly. “‘How can a boy not even in his twenties be so successful!’” She directed an appeasing smile at Ciel. “His words, not mine, you understand, Lord Phantomhive. I don’t mean to cast aspersion on your age.”

He returned his own practiced smile. “I didn’t take it that way at all, Miss Collins. If I got offended every time people referred to my age, I would exist in a perpetual state of anger.”

His retort made both siblings laugh, and it was under this auspicious beginning that they sat down for tea. They were served a back tea spiced with ginger, and the food wasn’t quite as good as what Sebastian would have prepared but then Ciel never expected it to be. The Collins siblings were good company, attentive hosts without being overbearing, with a reserve of entertaining stories that they used parsimoniously to prevent lulls in the conversation. They shared speaking time equally, bouncing off one another with long-time ease and sometimes even completing each other’s sentences. Acting, in other words, like two people who had been in each other’s company since before birth. Ciel knew intimately what that felt like.

Even though the Collinses were perfectly charming, Ciel found himself not taking much part in the conversation. The siblings tried to pull him in from time to time, taking turns at it, and he always answered them with the utmost cordiality—if these were people Elizabeth and Sieglinde wanted to cultivate as friends, then he would do nothing to ruin it—but for the most part he listened and observed. They were both in complete control of themselves, was one thing he noted. Flora held her delicate hands folded in her lap, while Andrew kept his on the arms of his chair. Their laughter was timely, and they hardly ever interrupted anyone. They were consummate conversationalists, probably trained from childhood by a father who wanted to use them as a means to climb up the social scale. 

“Have you been in Bath for long?” Elizabeth was asking, before taking a sip of her tea. “We have just arrived yesterday—but I think I told you that already when we met.”

“We’ve been here for a couple of weeks,” Miss Collins said. “And we’ll stay for two more weeks.”

“We’ve been coming every year for the past five years,” her brother said. “Our late mother enjoyed the city very much. Have you come here before?”

“Lizzie and I haven’t,” Sieglinde said, “but apparently Ciel has.”

“Oh, really?” Miss Collins said. “When was that?”

“It was years ago,” Ciel said shortly, not wanting to get into this topic. “I was a child, then. I barely have any memories of Bath.”

Probably sensing his reluctance, Miss Collins didn’t insist. “Well, I certainly hope you’ll enjoy yourself here, although you’ve come at a strange time.”

“A strange time?” Ciel asked, his curiosity piqued. “Why is that?”

“Oh, Flora, please,” Collins said, rolling his eyes. “Those stories are ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous or not, they’ve been the talk of the city for weeks.”

“Flora, you have said too much or not enough,” Elizabeth said, obviously getting curious too. “Please tell us what it is.”

Flora smiled, looking pleased with the attention, and leaned forward in the position of a storyteller. “It has started almost three weeks ago, I believe. Miss Weston and her friend Miss Eldridge were coming back into the city after a long walk in the countryside. It was getting close to sundown and they were afraid they’d got turned around, when they saw the figure of a man standing by the side of the road.”

Ciel could now see where this was going and had lost interest, but Elizabeth and Sieglinde were listening intently, caught into the story. Andrew Collins was watching his sister, smiling indulgently. 

“Miss Weston wanted to ask the man for their way back into Bath, but Miss Eldridge had a strange feeling about it and made her approach with caution. As they got closer they could both see it: the man was entirely surrounded by an eerie, ethereal glow. When they tried to call for him, there was a gust of wind and the man _disappeared._ Simply vanished. The two women looked around for a few more minutes, but they couldn’t find any trace that he’d even stood there.”

Elizabeth gasped. “Was he a ghost?” 

“Come on, a _ghost_ , really?” Ciel said. “It’s easy enough to make oneself glow with phosphorescent paint. A lot of men think it clever to use a ghostly costume as a cover for robbery and sexual assault.”

“It’s true about the paint,” Sieglinde said, “but in Flora’s story it doesn’t sound like the ghostly man tried to attack them or steal from them. Am I right, Flora?”

“You are, indeed, completely right. I’ve heard those stories, Lord Phantomhive. I think this has even happened here in the past. But in this case the… man didn’t make any sort of demand out of Miss Weston and Miss Eldridge. He merely stood there for a few minutes.”

“He could have simply meant to frighten them,” Ciel argued. “This is a worthy goal in itself for some.”

“You may be right, my lord,” Miss Collins conceded. “But over the past few weeks, more people than just Miss Weston and Miss Eldridge have seen the ghostly figure on the side of the path, and not all of them young impressionable women.”

“Men can be just as fanciful as women, even older men,” Ciel said. “Has this ‘ghost’ continued to abstain from interacting with anyone?”

“Yes, he has.”

“For the record, I agree with you, Lord Phantomhive,” Collins said, weaving his fingers over his stomach with a smile. “And so does my sister, I think, but she enjoys telling the story. Oh, don’t give me that look, Flora. In my opinion, whoever has thought of this little joke will soon get tired of it, and we won’t be hearing of this ghost anymore.”

“That may be so,” Ciel said. Of the whole story, it was the part about the man standing there doing nothing that intrigued him the most. He found the idea of a prankster a lot more likely than a genuine ghost, but wouldn’t it get tiresome very quickly for the perpetrator? “Either that, or he will escalate.”


	3. Chapter 3

The next morning over breakfast, ghosts were the main topic of conversation. Lizzie seemed to like the idea of this lone ghost peacefully watching travellers—more out of romanticism than superstition, Sieglinde thought. Ciel was of the opinion that the mere notion of a life after death was ridiculous to entertain, and he kept trying to get Sieglinde’s support on this. 

“Sullivan, you’re a scientist. Please tell me you find the idea as asinine as I do.”

“Well, I don’t know.” Seeing his disgusted look, she added, “I’m not saying it was a ghost for sure. But our understanding of the world is incomplete—as a scientist, I know _that_ much. Who can say with certainty that ghosts don’t exist?”

“The same way there were werewolves in Germany?” he said sharply.

It was a low blow, and after a moment of shock that he would dare bring this up to win an argument, Sieglinde pressed her lips in anger, refusing to rise to the bait. She spread a thick layer of spiced pear butter on her waffle before taking a bite of it. Across the table Lizzie was giving her a tender look of sympathy, and Sieglinde responded with a quick smile. 

Red spots bloomed on Ciel’s cheeks, whether from anger or embarrassment. Sieglinde generally enjoyed seeing him blush very much, but the spectacle was somewhat ruined by her annoyance. He took a sip of his tea and cleared his throat. 

“You’re probably right that one must keep an open mind,” he said. This was probably the closest thing to an apology that Sieglinde would receive; from Ciel, this was already a lot. “I just think that the story Miss Collins told us could be explained much more easily by a bit of glowing paint and a mischievous mind than by a ghost.”

“If there is no ghost,” Lizzie said, “then Mr Collins is right and this man should get tired of it quickly. Anyway, one way or another this looks harmless enough.”

“Maybe,” Ciel said, but he looked thoughtful. 

Sieglinde knew that look—it meant that the wheels were turning in that tortuous mind of his, and she wondered what he could see in that innocent ghost story that they couldn’t. She thought of asking him, but she didn’t want to drag the conversation about ghosts for any longer than necessary. 

“In other, more enjoyable topics,” Elizabeth said, “what would you think about doing some typical Bath activities? We haven’t been to the Pump Room yesterday. We absolutely must try the waters! And what about the baths?”

“I don’t want to go to the baths,” Ciel said quickly. “The water in the Pump Room tastes awful, but then it’s supposed to have medicinal properties, not to be something you drink for pleasure.”

“And would you come dancing tonight?” Lizzie asked with pleading eyes. 

Sieglinde watched Lizzie work her magic on her fiancé with some fascination. She knew Ciel wasn’t fond of dancing—mostly because he wasn’t good at it and hated failure—but she had little doubt that he would eventually yield to Lizzie’s wishes. It wasn’t Lizzie’s intent to manipulate Ciel, Sieglinde knew. Her friend was kind to the bone, and she would have never tried to make her fiancé do something he truly found unbearable. 

As Sieglinde had predicted, Ciel groaned, but eventually relented. “If we must,” he said and half-smiled when Elizabeth clapped her hands in delight.

Only Elizabeth Midford was capable of making Ciel Phantomhive look anything close to _soft_. They were adorable together, and they both looked like paintings from the greatest masters; Elizabeth, golden and sunny, and Ciel, pale like moonlight slanting over water. Sieglinde could have looked at them forever, but what she really wanted was to do a lot more than look. Don’t think about this, she told herself firmly. She wouldn’t let any unwanted feelings get in the way of her enjoying this vacation. 

The Pump Room was a wide and long space, with three-quarter Corinthian columns set in-betweens the numerous windows. Each end of the room held a recess, and in one of them a band of musicians played continuously, although the music was mostly drowned by the rumble of conversations. For the room was crowded, not just by the people waiting for their glass of Bath water, but also by many others who lingered afterward to talk.

“Being seen here is almost as important as drinking the water,” Ciel said, eyeing the crowd disdainfully. “This is a terribly fashionable place.”

The stream of water came from a marble vase placed in the centre of the southern side of the room, and it was served to the company by a man Ciel called ‘the pumper’, who was stationed within a bar on each side of which was a fire place. The water was warm, and, Sieglinde noted with interest, had a pronounced chalybeate flavour, although it didn’t smell like much. 

“The taste is… peculiar,” Lizzie said, making a face. 

“I did warn you,” Ciel said but drank his own glass with the ease of someone who was used to foul-tasting remedies. 

As they walked across the room, aiming toward the exit, they came upon Andrew and Flora Collins, there to get their daily dose of salutary water. They of course had to stop and greet them, and Flora asked them teasingly how they’d enjoyed their taste of water.

“It tasted very interesting,” Sieglinde said. “I think next time I will bring one of my vials, to take back a sample with me.”

The siblings gave her twin looks of bewilderment, and Ciel snorted. “Only you, Sullivan,” he said, shaking his head.

“What about you, Lord Phantomhive?” Mr Collins said, maybe judging Ciel safer to talk to—which showed how much he knew. “Did you like the water?”

“I’ve tasted it before,” Ciel said. “It’s all right.”

“Phantomhive?” a voice said from behind them. 

When Sieglinde turned around she saw two men standing there, one of them giving his arm to a woman with a familiarity that identified her as his wife. The three strangers were all in their mid to late twenties, well-dressed, and holding themselves with that unconscious air of privilege that Sieglinde saw in Ciel and even in Lizzie, the aura of a noble birth. 

“You’re Earl Phantomhive?” the man who wasn’t holding onto his wife said. 

He was tall and whip thin, with the kind of elegant long face, aquiline nose, and high brow that got called ‘aristocratic.’ There was a perpetually ironic twist to his mouth, a certain light in his eyes that made him look like he found the world around him a source of distant amusement. He was eyeing Ciel up and down, as though comparing him to an old mental image. 

“Do I know you?” Ciel said coldly. 

The other man, shorter and stouter, and who bore impressive blond sideburns, took over before his friend could reply, and said, “You probably won’t remember us, but we both used to come in Bath with our families every year, when we were in our teens and you were but a child. You and your brother made quite an impression. I’m Benjamin Hyde. My friend here is Lord Rudolph Blackwood, and this is my wife.”

The young woman, who had a round, friendly face and hair of a very pale shade of blond, gave Ciel a small curtsy while her husband held out his hand.

 _What is this about a brother?_ Sieglinde wondered, and she looked over at Lizzie for a clue, which was when she saw that her friend had gone pale and seemed almost frightened. She stepped forward as though she wanted to shield Ciel with her body, but stopped herself, looking uncertain. Then Sieglinde checked for Ciel’s reaction, and the sight of him made all the blood freeze in her veins. 

He stood very still, and was looking at the hand offered to him as if it were some strange object he had never encountered before. His face was a mask that held no identifiable emotion. Sieglinde had seen Ciel go through a lot of different emotional states since the beginning of their acquaintance. She’d seen him confused and embarrassed when they were trying to talk to each other in their respective languages; hurt and scared, distressed beyond endurance when he’d become a victim of the miasma in the forest; cold and ruthless when he pointed a gun at her head and offered her the choice that had changed her life. He’d been irritated, angry, bored, amused, thoughtful, a myriad of emotions that he always tried to repress—but she had never seen him look as he did now, as though his soul had deserted him and left behind it an empty shell.

“Mr Hyde,” he said in a colourless voice, shaking the man’s hand. “A pleasure.”

“A shame about your parents,” said Lord Blackwood, in an indifferent tone that made Sieglinde want to hit him. Couldn’t he see what this—whatever _this_ was—was doing to Ciel? But the man seemed to find Ciel an object of intense curiosity. “But, really, tell me because I am incapable of seeing the difference: which one of the two are you?”

A sense of stillness fell over the group after the question was uttered. The Collins twins looked as confused as Sieglinde felt, and like they dearly wished for an unobtrusive way to retire. Lizzie seemed close to panic and kept sending Ciel desperate looks, her fingers spread as if she wanted to touch him but didn’t dare. Mr and Mrs Hyde, for their parts, looked mortified at their friend’s brazenness. 

Ciel, reciting the words as if they were so ingrained he didn’t have to think about them, said to the company, “If you will excuse me,” and then turned on his heels and walked away, his back very straight and his fists tightly clenched. 

Lizzie, her eyes brimming with tears, whirled around to Lord Blackwood and said, “Why would you _say_ that? What’s wrong with you?” 

“Rudolph, really,” Mr Hyde said tightly. “I apologise on my friend’s behalf, my lady. Sometimes I don’t know what comes over him.”

Lord Blackwood snorted. “Don’t apologise for me, Benjamin, it makes you look overbearing. You are not my mother. Very well.” He bowed to Lizzie, his posture perfect although he still managed to put a mocking spin to it. “My apologies, my lady, if my innocent curiosity has offended your—”

“My _fiancé_ ,” Lizzie snapped. “Earl _Ciel_ Phantomhive. Sieglinde, I think we should go now.” Her expression softened when she looked at Andrew and Flora Collins, becoming apologetic. “I’m sorry for the scene,” she said. “Maybe we should—”

“We’ll see each other later,” Flora said, smiling reassuringly. “I’ll send word to you.”

“Yes, thank you. I—thank you.”

Lizzie grabbed Sieglinde’s arm and took off, walking at a pace that was a little bit too fast for Sieglinde’s comfort. Lizzie’s cheeks were red, her eyes still too bright, and she was looking around feverishly. Looking, Sieglinde understood, for Ciel.

They left the Pump Room and walked up Stall Street, where they’d come from, cleaving across the crowd of people coming for their water. Sieglinde’s mind was whirling with questions, but Lizzie looked so upset that she wasn’t sure how to bring them up, so she could only turn them around and try to make sense of what had just happened by herself. Mr Hyde had mentioned a brother, and neither Ciel nor Lizzie had contradicted him. Sieglinde had only ever heard about Ciel’s parents—not that he talked about them, but she knew at least that they’d been murdered. No one had ever talked of a brother. Lord Blackwood had asked ‘which one of the two’ Ciel was, presumably speaking of the brother too, meaning that he couldn’t tell the two apart. Meaning—

“Did Ciel have a twin?” she asked suddenly, making Lizzie stop dead in her tracks. 

Lizzie was holding her face turned away so that Sieglinde couldn’t see her expression, and after a moment the silence from her friend began to fill her with unease. She could understand the topic of a dead twin being too upsetting for Ciel, but Sieglinde had heard Lizzie speak of her late aunt and uncle without any issue, albeit with sadness, and she couldn’t make sense of how extreme her reaction was. What was Sieglinde missing here?

“Let’s move away from the crowd,” Lizzie said suddenly, tugging at Sieglinde’s arm once more.

They found themselves a secluded spot in a garden and sat on a bench under a weeping beech tree. A light wind made the silvery leaves rustle gently over their heads. They could hear the distant echoes of conversations from people promenading, but they were far away enough that Lizzie apparently felt it safe to speak. 

“I’m sorry,” she said, taking Sieglinde’s hand while wiping her eyes. “This is all very—You have to understand, we have avoided speaking of his brother to Ciel for seven years.”

“So, he _had_ a twin.”

“Yes. They looked so perfectly alike, people were always amazed by their resemblance. I’m not surprised that Mr Hyde and Lord Blackwood remember them.”

Sieglinde shook her head in amazement. “I have to say, the notion of another one like Ciel is hard for me to fathom.”

Lizzie smiled briefly. “Oh, they looked physically identical, but they had very different personalities.”

“What happened?”

“They were both kidnapped after my uncle and my aunt’s murder, and Ciel—only Ciel returned. He refused to ever tell us the details of how his brother had died, wouldn’t even say his name, and we eventually stopped pressuring him. This is not out of indifference for my other cousin’s fate. You didn’t know him—Ciel—before, Sieglinde. He came back metamorphosed. It was… as if he’d been broken to pieces and put back wrong. Like a part of him was missing—and maybe it felt that way to him. We just didn’t want to cause him any more pain, not after everything he’d been through.”

Sieglinde wondered at her friend’s strange reluctance to saying her other cousin’s name. Could it be that after all these years of holding in that name she’d developed a superstitious fear of saying it? But it wasn’t a question that Sieglinde could bring herself to ask—the old hurt she could see behind Lizzie’s eyes was deep and enduring, and she wouldn’t do anything to stir it further. Seeing Lizzie so distraught felt wrong, and Sieglinde wished she wasn’t so powerless to help. And what if it felt somewhat disconcerting to discover that an entire part of her closest friends’ pasts had been hidden from her? This wasn’t the first time she had been lied to. 

“Let’s go back to the house,” Sieglinde said gently to Lizzie. “Maybe Ciel is already there.”

Lizzie’s head shot up to look at her, her tear-filled eyes shining like burnished gold. “Do you really think so? Where else could he have gone?” She started knotting her fingers together, tightly enough that the fabric of her gloves strained at the knuckles. “Why did I bring him here? I knew he’d been in Bath before with his family, and it was all too possible that someone might remember the twins—if you’d ever seen them together, you’d understand. Oh, and that awful man! Why would he—”

“Lizzie. Lizzie, please.” Sieglinde took hold of Lizzie’s hands and forced them apart, unfolding the fingers with great care. She wanted to take off Lizzie’s gloves and touch skin, slide her fingers over Lizzie’s palm and maybe drop a kiss at the centre of it. She said, “Stop berating yourself. It only hurts you, and it won’t help Ciel. Come on, let’s go.”

They went back to number 8, Royal Crescent, but found that Ciel hadn’t preceded them there. It sent Lizzie into a spiral of panic, and it was all Sieglinde could do to calm her down when she was getting uneasy herself. Ciel Phantomhive was a ruthless, cold-hearted boy, but infinitely breakable at the same time, with lines of fracture that ran deep. She had witnessed it first-hand. 

Paula fussed all afternoon over her young mistress, who spent her time peering anxiously out the window for a sign of her fiancé. Wolfram paced the house thunderously, cursing Ciel’s name at irregular intervals, which was Wolf’s version of fussing and did manage to make Sieglinde feel marginally better. Sebastian, on the other hand, was reacting rather placidly to the whole affair. 

“If the young master finds himself in real danger, I’ll know it,” he said with such authority that Sieglinde wouldn’t have thought to contradict him. “He’ll eventually wander back home.”

And indeed, just when the day started creeping into dusk, the front door to the house opened and Ciel came in. He looked slightly haggard, with his hair tousled, his clothes wrinkled, and the knuckles of his hands scratched and bruised, but he seemed calm and clear-eyed. After closing the door, he swept a look over the group that crowded the narrow space of the front hall. 

“Sebastian,” he said, his voice a little hoarse. “I’ll be going to bed.”

“Won’t you have something to eat first, young master?”

“No.”

Without another word, he went up the stairs, ignoring Lizzie’s worried calls for him. Sebastian followed suit, leaving the rest of them behind in the hall, disconcerted.

“He looked fine, didn’t he, my lady?” Paula said hesitantly, casting her mistress nervous looks. “I’m sure tomorrow he will be right as rain, as if nothing had happened.”

Lizzie rewarded her maid’s efforts with a tremulous smile. “Yes. Yes, I’m sure you’re right.”

Wolfram huffed. “He’s a rat,” he said. “Worried my lady and didn’t apologise.”

“You mean he’s a brat, Wolf,” Sieglinde said, patting him on the arm. Now that she was free from the tension of waiting for Ciel, she felt worn out. “Oh, yes. That he is.”

\---

In the morning, Sebastian came back from town, where he had gone for food before either of them woke up, with a shocking piece of news.

“There’s been a murder, my lord,” he told Ciel. His manner was chipper, as though he expected the ghastly announcement to cheer up his master. 

Ciel cocked his head and looked at him with an expectant air. He had barely said a word since coming down, and hadn’t done much more than poke at his food, so that the remnants of his half-eaten breakfast lay in front of him like abandoned ruins after a natural disaster. 

“Well?” he said.

“The victim was Earl Walter E. Clarey,” Sebastian said. “He was twenty-seven, unmarried. He’d inherited the title from his father barely a year before. A servant found his body in the middle of the night, and I heard that his face was ‘distorted as though he had died of fright.’” 

“What rubbish,” Ciel said, rolling his eye. 

“More interesting,” Sebastian went on, “is that Lord Clarey had been complaining about being haunted for the past few days.”

“Oh,” Lizzie said. “Do you think this has anything to do with the story Flora told us about?”

Sieglinde looked up curiously from her cup of Earl Grey Cream tea and its pleasant vanilla scent. She’d been just about to drop nose first into it, so tired she was. She’d slept dreadfully, her dreams haunted for some odd reason with the face of the old witch, her own mother who’d manufactured a world for her to grow up in. Maybe those revelations on Ciel’s past had brought up buried memories of her own past to the surface. Whatever the cause, she didn’t care much for it.

“Bath seems to be positively swarming with ghosts,” Ciel said wryly.

“This particular ghost went as far as knocking on Lord Clarey’s window.”

Ciel’s eyebrows shot up. “Now that’s interesting,” he murmured.

“Are you going to get involved?” Sieglinde asked him. 

There was a keen gleam to his eye that contrasted with the dullness from a moment before. She almost said, _it would take your mind off memories of your twin_ , but Lizzie had made her promise that she would not mention to Ciel that she knew, even though he must have guessed she did.

Ciel pinched his mouth. “I don’t see why I would. I’m on vacation. Aren’t I supposed to be resting? And I only follow Her Majesty’s wishes. As long as I don’t get any order from her, I have no reason to get involved. But—” He was playing with the heavy ring on his thumb, and Sieglinde found her eyes drawn to the delicate bones of his hand and wrist. “Lord Walter E. Clarey. The name rings a bell, but I can’t put my finger on it.”

Someone knocked on the door, and Ciel’s mouth pulled down in irritation. “Who might that be at this hour?”

It was past ten, but Sieglinde was wondering the same thing. Besides the Collinses, they hadn’t told anyone about where they were staying, and there was no reason for people to seek them out. The whole point of this vacation had been to get some peace, but they hadn’t started very well on that front.

Sebastian, who had gone to the door to confront their visitor, came back to say, “This is Inspector Cornelius Carmichael for you, master. He says it’s urgent.”

Sieglinde met Lizzie’s eyes, then, and saw her looking concerned—most likely because she worried about how Ciel would handle the intrusion in his emotional state. But Ciel, though somewhat annoyed, actually looked livelier than he’d had since the day before. Maybe Sebastian had it right, and all Ciel needed was a grisly murder case to sink his teeth into.

“Very well,” Ciel said. “We’ll receive them in the first parlour, Sebastian. Unless—” His eye slid to Lizzie.

“We’re coming with you, of course,” she said hurriedly. “Aren’t we, Sieglinde?”

“Oh, yes. I want to know what this is all about.”

Inspector Carmichael was a short, round man with an expressive moustache. He hastily took off his bowler hat when he saw Lizzie and Sieglinde come in with Ciel, obviously taken aback by their presence. 

“Lord Phantomhive,” he said. “My ladies.”

“Inspector Carmichael. Please, have a seat. May I introduce you to my fiancée, Lady Elizabeth Midford, and our friend from Germany, Lady Sieglinde.”

“How do you do,” said the inspector. “But, my lord—”

Ciel had already sat down and Lizzie and Sieglinde imitated him, leaving Inspector Carmichael to stand dumbly on his own with no other choice but to find himself a chair and sit down too. 

“Have you heard of the murder, Lord Phantomhive?” he asked Ciel, seemingly trying to avoid looking at Lizzie and Sieglinde as though their presence was too upsetting for him. 

“Lord Clarey’s murder? Indeed, I have, my butler was just telling us about it.”

“Then you know about the… peculiar circumstances surrounding this affair.”

“You mean that silly ghost story?”

Inspector Carmichael licked his lips and his moustache trembled slightly. “This has been going on for weeks, and it wasn’t too much trouble as long as the, the ghost was just standing there. People were curious, and it was a rather entertaining business on the whole. But now, a _death_ , and—”

“And, to make it worse, the death of a peer,” Ciel said with a sardonic smile. 

“This won’t do at all. Bath is a, a place of _repose_. People come here to find healing, rest, and entertainment. That sort of murder is very bad for the city, and if people get into their heads that a ghost is responsible for it—”

“I understand your concerns, Inspector,” Ciel said. “But I’m afraid I can’t see what any of this has to do with me.”

He had recovered the superb that Sieglinde associated with his Earl Phantomhive persona. Legs crossed, hands resting idly on the arms of his chair, he looked over the poor inspector with an air of knowing superiority. He was awful and magnificent, and Sieglinde wanted very badly to pull him to her and have her way with him. 

“I know people in London,” the inspector said, turning his hat between his hands nervously. “People at Scotland Yard. I know what you do. I didn’t imagine you to be quite so—”

“Young?”

“But I’ve heard you’re extremely competent. Discreet, too. I want this to be resolved as quickly and as… discreetly as humanly possible.”

Ciel chuckled. “As humanly possible. I see.” He seemed inordinately mirthful, for some reason. On Ciel, this kind of sentiment always looked a little scary. “Inspector Carmichael, I appreciate the compliments, but if you know about what I do as much as you pretend, then you also know that there’s only one person I accept cases from, and you’re not her.”

Inspector Carmichael didn’t seem to have anticipated this response, because he opened his mouth and then closed it again, looking at a loss. Whatever contact he had who had told him about Ciel’s function, they must not have warned him about his personality. Sieglinde felt rather bad for Inspector Carmichael. 

“Ciel, you should do it,” Lizzie said suddenly.

Ciel’s composure slipped a little, betraying surprise at her intervention. “I thought I needed the rest. I remember you lecturing me about it quite clearly.”

“I know, and I meant it. But I’m not sure how restful this has been for you so far.” She paused, looking like she was biting on the rest of what she wanted to say. “What harm can it do to have a look, out of cordiality for poor Inspector Carmichael?”

Ciel blinked, then said to the inspector, “You’re in luck, Inspector. Be grateful for my fiancée’s kind heart.”

“I, uh, thank you, my lady.”

“Has a post mortem been done on the body already?”

“Not yet. We’ve sent for a surgeon, but—”

“Excellent,” Ciel said, pressing the tips of his fingers together. “I assume you don’t mind if my associate and I have a look at it?”

“Your what?”

Ciel flicked an elegant hand at Sieglinde, and Inspector Carmichael’s eyes widened. “I, uh, my lord, I don’t think this is a, a spectacle suitable for a young lady.”

“Doctor Sullivan is very competent, I can assure you. And I trust her.”

Sieglinde felt a flush spread from her cheeks to her whole body at the unexpected compliment. She knew Ciel trusted her competences and knowledge; he wouldn’t keep coming to her if he didn’t, as he always expected nothing but the best. He’d never said the words out loud, though, and the fact that he had just done so, and in front of a stranger, was affecting her in ways that she hadn’t anticipated. Inspector Carmichael was looking at her with a bemused air, which didn’t make it any easier for her to hide how flustered she was.

“Where is the body now?” Ciel asked.

“Ah, uh, it’s waiting for examination at the General Hospital’s mortuary. Do you want to go now?”

“There’s no time like the present, is there? Sebastian! Fetch my hat and my coat. We’re going to the mortuary.”

Inspector Carmichael had more comments to make about what was suitable for a lady when he saw that Lizzie was getting ready to accompany them. In the end, though, he had to relent when he saw that his worries about propriety weren’t meeting any favourable echoes. 

The General Hospital’s mortuary was smaller than the ones Sieglinde had seen in London. The room Inspector Carmichael led them to was clean and well-lit, with the hushed atmosphere of death that was generally found in such places, although there weren’t many bodies in it. A floral scent floated in the air, from the bowls of flowers used to try and mask the odour in the room. It was only partly doing its job, but Sieglinde was used to the smell of dead bodies, and so was Ciel. Sieglinde glanced at Lizzie to see how she was faring, and saw that her friend didn’t seem too overwhelmed. Sebastian, of course, was unflappable as ever, and from the mild expression on his face you could have thought he was simply shopping for a nice piece of meat to serve at dinner. 

Inspector Carmichael had one of the mortuary clerks peel the sheet off one of the bodies, revealing a man in his late twenties, slightly overweight, with thinning hair and the suggestion of a moustache. The body’s most striking feature, though, was the grimace that had frozen on his face, as though the man’s feature had been twisted in terror at the moment of death. 

“Sullivan,” Ciel said, “If you don’t mind.”

“That’s what I came here for, isn’t it?”

Under Inspector Carmichael and the mortuary clerk’s aghast looks, Sieglinde started her examination. She tried to look at the fingers for cuts or wounds first, but it was made difficult by the fact that they were clenched into fists—as far as she could tell for now, it didn’t look like the man had grasped anything, though. She examined the lips and mouth, and leaned in to smell for peculiar odours.

Meanwhile, Ciel was interrogating Inspector Carmichael. “When was the body found?” he asked. 

“Around midnight.”

“So, a little over ten hours ago, then.” This was aimed at her, and Sieglinde carefully stored the information away. “How long between the moment he was found dead and the last time he was seen alive?”

Sieglinde pulled the sheet further down, baring the body entirely. It made the clerk stammer, “Ah, my lady, are you _sure_ —” 

“Oh, don’t fuss,” she said. “It’s not my first time looking at a naked man.”

The man snapped his mouth shut and Sieglinde was able to continue her work with no further interruption. She examined every inch of the naked body closely, but could find no injury or strange discolouration. 

“A maid saw him about two hours before the body was found,” Inspector Carmichael said. “He said then that he would go to bed soon.”

“But he wasn’t found in his bedroom, was he?”

“No, he was found in his study.”

“What made people check on him?”

“Muffled cries were heard, as well as the sounds of objects being knocked about.”

Sieglinde straightened up, and asked, “Were his eyes open when he was found? Was his body as rigid as it is now?”

“Yes, he was as stiff as a board, and his eyes were wide open. He looked—” The inspector’s moustache twitched. “He looked like he’d seen the Devil himself.”

“What do you think?” Ciel asked Sieglinde.

“There’s no visible wound. From the sound of it, rigor mortis set in very early.”

“Hmm.” Ciel made a disappointed grimace. “Strychnine poisoning then?”

“That’s what I think.”

“How dull. Inspector, when your surgeon opens this man he should find traces of strychnine in the stomach. I’m afraid no ghost did this.”

“Oh, right. Right. I mean, I never really thought a ghost was the culprit, my lord. I just want—”

“I know, I know. You want this to be dealt with quickly.” Ciel turned to Lizzie, who looked a little pale but not terribly shocked by the sight of a dead body. “Lizzie, would you mind it if we went to have a look at the crime scene?”

“Of course not,” Lizzie said, raising her chin up. “I’m the one who suggested you take on that case, after all.”

“All right. Inspector, I trust that you can get us in there without any issue?”

“Ah, uh.” Ciel was already heading toward the exit, and the inspector had to trot up after him. “No, no, that shouldn’t be a problem.”

Lord Clarey had lived on his own in a townhouse at the periphery of the city, and they were welcomed there by a swarm of anxious servants who had been told to stay in town until the end of the investigation, and hadn’t found anywhere else to go for the moment. 

“No one has gone in the study,” said Mr Clarkson, the butler. He was very obviously trying not to stare at Sieglinde, Ciel, and Lizzie. “I made sure of that. I kept the room locked and I’m the only one who has a key.”

“You did well,” Inspector Carmichael said. “We just need to check it again. We need to—we’ll be in there for just a moment.”

The study was a cramped little room, a place where the deceased had clearly spent a lot of time. There were small bookcases, tucked into the two recesses on each sides of the fireplace, glass-door cabinets in the corners, a settee and several tufted chairs, a great deal of pictures crammed on the chimney mantle, fighting for space with a couple of candle-holders. The writing desk by the entrance was crowded with more books, empty inkpots and used quills, scratches of paper, an hourglass, reading glasses, and several bottles that looked like they contained medicine.

Ciel walked around the room, stopping next to the round lattice coffee table that had been knocked over. It must have held the tray and the empty cup of tea that lay next to it on the floor. Because of the thick rug the cup hadn’t broken, and Ciel picked it up. He rubbed a finger at the bottom and then licked it. 

“Ciel!” Lizzie exclaimed. “Why would you—”

“Don’t worry,” Sieglinde told her, squeezing her hand reassuringly. “Even if the cup contained the strychnine that killed Lord Clarey, this wouldn’t be enough to hurt Ciel.”

“It wasn’t in the cup,” Ciel declared. “Strychnine tastes very bitter. Did the room look exactly like this when you found the body?”

“As I said, I made sure no one touched anything,” Mr Clarkson said haughtily. 

Inspector Carmichael hadn’t introduced any of them, and the butler was eyeing Ciel very sceptically. Thoughts of one butler leading to thoughts of another, Sieglinde realised in that instant that Sebastian wasn’t with them in the room. She hadn’t seen Ciel give him any order, but wherever he was, she felt sure that he was following his master’s directions.

“It doesn’t look like there’s been a fight in this room,” Lizzie said.

Ciel looked up at her and flashed her a smile. “Exactly. Lord Clarey could have knocked that table while he was convulsing from the strychnine. This would explain the noises the servants heard. He ingested the poison from something in this house, but it wasn’t in the tea.”

“Of course it wasn’t in the tea!” Mr Clarkson exclaimed, affronted. “Are you suggesting that someone in this house—”

“Someone poisoned your master. It would have been much easier to do as an insider.”

“There must have been an intruder!”

“Maybe.”

Ciel wandered around the room again and stopped in front of the writing desk, examining what lay on it. For some reason, Sieglinde felt compelled to look in direction of the door, and saw that Sebastian had come back and stood in the doorway. Inspector Carmichael hadn’t seen him coming and was startled enough to let out an undignified yelp.

“You—Where, where have you been?”

“I was there the whole time, Inspector,” Sebastian said smoothly.

“Really? I didn’t—”

“We’re done here,” Ciel said suddenly. “Mr Clarkson, thank you for your cooperation. Inspector, shall we go now?”

Inspector Carmichael was dismissed as soon as they’d left the house.

“We can find our way back home on our own, thank you,” Ciel told him.

“But, did you find anything? What are your conclusions, my lord?”

“We’ll let you know.”

They left the poor inspector on the pavement in front of Lord Clarey’s house, looking as if he wasn’t sure he’d made such a great decision involving the Queen’s watchdog. Ciel marched ahead at a determined pace, and Sieglinde at least found it hard to follow him. They walked past an old lady selling tulips, and Ciel waited until they were a little further down the street before he said, “So?”

“According to the servants,” Sebastian said, pitching his voice at a low, but conversational tone, “the supposed haunting started about ten days ago or so. It started with Lord Clarey complaining about objects being moved around without his explicit direction. He accused the servants, naturally, and Mr Clarkson tried to find who was responsible but his investigation remained inconclusive. Then it was doors being opened when they should have been closed, and strange murmurs at night that seemed to come from nowhere, until it culminated with Lord Clarey seeing a glowing face at the window of his study. Only then did he get really scared. He apparently could barely sleep, out of fear that the ghost would get to him when he rested. He seemed to be awfully certain that the ghost was vengeful.”

“Hmm. The study is on the ground floor,” Ciel said. “I assume you went to check under the windows.”

“Of course. I couldn’t find any obvious footprint in the flowerbeds under the windows.”

“Maybe it really was a ghost, then,” Sieglinde said, more out of provocation than conviction. 

Ciel huffed. “Sure, it was. Meanwhile, I have a little something for you to examine.” His gloved hand disappeared inside the folds of his coat and came back with a small bottle. “I found this on Lord Clarey’s writing desk.”

“Did you _steal_ this from the crime scene?” Lizzie said. “Why didn’t you ask Inspector Carmichael for it?”

“It’s a lot quicker that way, and I didn’t want the servants to hear about it. It’s very likely that someone in this house is at least an accomplice. If Inspector Carmichael has any complaints about my methods, then he should have thought twice before asking me to get involved.”

“What is it?” Sieglinde asked.

“It’s a strychnine-based tonic. Lord Clarey wouldn’t be suspicious of the bitter taste if he were already drinking something that contains strychnine. Now, it shouldn’t normally have a concentration high enough to kill, but maybe this was tampered with.”

Sieglinde took the bottle and pocketed it. “I’ll look into it. What’s your next step?”

“I think there’s no other choice,” Ciel said with a heavy sigh. “We’ll have to go to the ball.”


	4. Chapter 4

There was some irony to the fact that a murder case was what finally made Ciel intent on going to a ball, and it wasn’t lost on Elizabeth. She consoled herself by thinking how much better he looked now that he had something to keep him busy, to keep his mind away from the memories that horrible meeting with Lord Blackwood must have triggered. Elizabeth still felt guilty about it—even after Ciel had told her he’d been there before she had continued to push for the trip. Her only excuse was that she’d assumed that it had been so long ago, and only one time, and that surely he didn’t have a lot of memories of the place. 

She sighed and tucked a loose curl of hair back under her bonnet. She’d managed to convince Sieglinde to go to the baths with her—Ciel had been unmovable on the topic—and now they were both relaxing in hot water under the open blue sky. The Queen’s Bath, where they were right now, was connected to the King’s Bath and supplied by the same source, but being farther from it the water wasn’t as hot. The open pool was surrounded by a handsome colonnade, which echoed with the murmured conversations of the people enjoying the seats and recesses provided to the bathers for when the heat got to be too much. Elizabeth’s eyes were drawn to some of the men in matching tops and shorts, and she couldn’t help but imagine her lean, beautiful Ciel in one of those suits, his slender arms and legs, his pale skin glistening from perspiration and his cheeks flushed from the heat.

_What on earth am I thinking? That heat is getting to my head!_

Needing something else to think about, Elizabeth looked over at her friend to check if she was enjoying herself. Sieglinde was wearing a cute navy-blue bathing ensemble with a sailor collar top trimmed in white grosgrain ribbon, and matching gathered knee-length bloomers, bonnet, and waist skirt trimmed with white. Elizabeth’s own ensemble had red and white stripes, with banded dolman sleeves, and she thought it adorable too, but Sieglinde truly made a striking sight, pretty as a porcelain doll. Elizabeth shook her head, trying to clear it. She was starting to feel a bit funny.

“Lizzie, are you all right?”

“Oh, yes. Just a bit dizzy, I guess.”

“Do you want to get out of the water? I don’t think we should stay for too long.”

Sieglinde was probably right, but Elizabeth felt loose-limbed and lazy, and she didn’t want to end it just yet. “In a moment, maybe.” She adjusted her bonnet. “What do you think of this murder? Do you think Lord Clarey might have been haunted for real? I know Ciel is convinced this is a sham—”

“Ciel can be very narrow-minded,” Sieglinde replied hotly. And then, a little more evenly, she said, “It does look like an ordinary murder. What need would a ghost have for strychnine to kill? But I do like to believe that there are some things out there that science can’t explain—yet. Ghosts could be such a thing. What do you think?”

“I think—” Images of her late uncle, aunt, and cousin flashed through Elizabeth’s mind. “I would like to believe that we leave our imprint on the world after we leave it. I don’t know that I like the thought of our dead being trapped here in agony, though. I hope they’re free to get to a better world, and find peace in Heaven if they couldn’t find it on Earth.”

She heard the sound of sloshing water and glanced aside to see that Sieglinde had moved closer to her. Elizabeth smiled at her friend, acknowledging the attempt at comforting her. They were now sitting side-to-side in the water, knees, hips, and shoulders touching, as though the both of them made only one body. Oh, it was so very hot that Elizabeth didn’t know her own thoughts anymore; she felt oddly weightless, while at the same time being acutely aware of each point of contact with Sieglinde.

“Are you looking forward to the dance tonight?” Sieglinde asked. 

“Well, I certainly would have preferred if it wasn’t part of a murder investigation, but I shan’t let it ruin my fun.”

“I wish I could dance,” Sieglinde said wistfully.

“Oh.” 

At first taken by surprise by the comment, Elizabeth didn’t know what to say. Then she was overcome by a wave of disgust at herself: and here she’d been going on about how much she wanted to go dancing, not thinking whether Sieglinde wanted it too or was even capable of doing it! Her strange contraptions of metal allowed her to walk, but walking and dancing were two very different beasts.

“Are you sure you can’t—” _What am I saying, of course she’s sure!_ “I’m so sorry. We don’t have to go if you don’t want to. Ciel isn’t going there to dance, anyway.”

“Don’t be stupid! I won’t be in the way of you having your fun. I’ve never been to a ball, and it will be very amusing, I’m sure, to watch all those people. I will certainly enjoy watching you dance.”

Sieglinde’s eyes were a vivid green, like moss after a shower of rain, and they reflected such earnestness and such affection that Elizabeth felt her heart clench painfully in her chest and she wondered if she was really worthy of that kind of friendship. 

“Lizzie? You look very red, I think we should get out.”

“You—you’re right. We need to get ready for the dance anyway.”

Elizabeth left the pool first and then helped her friend out of the water. Sieglinde had been forced to leave her walking aids with their clothing, so Elizabeth looped an arm around her waist to help her make her way back. She had strong arms from sword work, but Sieglinde barely weighed anything so it was no trouble at all to support her. She’d done the same to get her to the pool and it had been no trouble then too. But this time Elizabeth felt strangely aware of the way their wet suits clung to their skins, and thought that it was worse than being naked. Her face felt on fire and she was certain she must be blushing very badly. Sieglinde, who was a few inches shorter, lifted her face to Elizabeth’s. The tendrils of hair that stuck to her forehead and temples looked like they had been drawn there with black ink. Sieglinde parted her lips, and for one, mad moment Elizabeth thought she was going to—

“Do you need any help, my ladies?”

Elizabeth jumped guiltily, as though she’d been caught red-handed. She looked and saw a heavy-set, middle-aged man smiling at them in askance. 

“No!” Elizabeth exclaimed, terribly flustered. “I mean, it’s very kind of you to offer, sir, but we don’t need any help.”

They went back to the ladies’ changing room without a word to each other, a strange awkwardness between them that Elizabeth couldn’t explain. Fortunately, it had dissipated by the time they went back to the house, and they spent many delightful hours this afternoon deciding what they were going to wear to the ball. After much prevaricating, Elizabeth decided on a dress of ruby red silk and matching ribbons in her hair, while Sieglinde wore a bustle gown of green and black satin, with short gathered sleeves and a bodice trimmed with black lace. Ciel declared them both lovely, an uncharacteristically soft turn to his mouth, which filled Elizabeth’s heart with lightness and joy. He was very handsome himself in his black evening costume, the cut of his dress coat and the shawl opening of his waistcoat emphasising his silhouette. 

The place to go for entertainment in Bath, where everyone flocked to most nights of the week, was the Assembly Rooms. Situated to the east of the Circus, between Bennett Street and Alfred Street, the Rooms contained a suite of elegant and spacious apartments; there was the ball room, the tea room, the card room, and the octagon room, all arranged in a U shape and each of them decorated with fine art. They arrived a little after eight, which was the time when the balls were generally scheduled to commence, and the lilting music of the band was almost covered by the hum of voices, the patter of feet, and the rustle of dresses. The lights made the jewels and the Whitefriars crystal chandeliers shine. There were so many lovely dresses that Elizabeth didn’t have enough eyes to gaze upon the glistening silk, satin, taffeta, faille, moiré, and soft velvet, all the different colours, from strident magenta, electric blue, and vivid yellow to muted blues, greens, and pinks, and the flying ribbons, the ethereal lace, the rich embroideries, the colourful roses of silk. 

She had her first dance with Ciel, who performed rather more gracefully than she’d have thought, and it would have been the exact scenario of her perfect evening if not for a lingering pang of guilt in her stomach. She could hardly make sense of where it came from, as she had done nothing wrong, but it was there and it managed to spoil the pleasure of her too short dance with Ciel. Then Ciel retired to the card room with on his face the look of a man on a mission, and Elizabeth went to join Sieglinde, who was sitting on the side of the room with other women waiting for an invitation.

She found her friend not alone as she had left her, but in the company of Andrew and Flora Collins, chatting amicably with them. 

“Elizabeth, you look so lovely,” Flora exclaimed when she noticed Elizabeth coming up to them. She held out a hand and Elizabeth took it, feeling a little awkward. “This dress looks marvellous on you.”

“Thank you. You look splendid yourself.”

“How is Lord Phantomhive?” Mr Collins said, his eyes flicking around as if looking for Ciel. 

“Ciel is well, thank you. Better,” she added, thinking of the scene from the day before. “He’s gone to play cards, I think.”

She sat on the chair next to Sieglinde, anticipating anxiously the questions that the twins might have about what had happened at the Pump Room. But then she saw them share a quick look, the kind of look that was meaningful, but undecipherable to outsiders, and that only people who knew each other very well could exchange. She realised that they knew already, having probably asked around for clarification, but that they weren’t going to talk about it now.

“Andrew,” Flora said to her brother with a playful air of reproach. “Aren’t you going to ask Elizabeth for a dance?”

“Oh, I think I’ll stay there for a moment,” Elizabeth said. “I’ve just danced with Ciel and I need a moment of rest.” 

She wasn’t tired, but she didn’t want to abandon Sieglinde for too long. She didn’t want to draw attention to her friend’s infirmity, though. 

“We can keep you company for a little longer,” Mr Collins said. “But, Lady Elizabeth, will you grant me a dance when you will be sufficiently rested? A man cannot spend all night dancing with his sister.”

Flora slapped her brother’s arm with the back of her hand. “Shush, you. You’ve never had any trouble finding a dancing partner in our lives.”

“Neither have you, sister mine.”

“I would be delighted for a dance with you,” Elizabeth said, smiling at the siblings’ bantering. “But I wouldn’t want to deprive all the other young ladies in this room.”

“Lady Elizabeth, you would deprive _me_ if you didn’t allow me this dance.”

Again, Elizabeth was helpless to contain a smile. Even if he was probably just being polite, the attention was flattering. Mr Collins was charming, undoubtedly, and good-looking too. Tall, athletic, with an easy smile and a wholesome air that was shared by many of her brother Edward’s friends. A fine specimen of manhood, so at odds with the looks and attitudes of her own fiancé. Her darling Ciel, who was too thin, too pale, too difficult. Elizabeth’s stomach twisted once again with that odd feeling of guilt, and she had to force a smile when she answered Mr Collins.

“It would be my pleasure, of course. Just give my feet a bit of time to rest.”

“Of course.”

Mr Collins went to get refreshments for all of them, and Flora turned to Elizabeth and Sieglinde. 

“Have you heard of the news?”

“You mean the murder?” Elizabeth said. “Yes, we’ve heard of it. Did you know the man?”

“Oh, but this is old news already.” Flora smiled with the air of someone holding back secret knowledge. “The murder has people all turned around over ghosts—you remember the story I told you about, I assume—and Lady Pickering, who has a powerful need to be the centre of attention at all times, has decided to call for a medium from London.”

“A medium?” Sieglinde said, almost leaning across Elizabeth to better talk to Flora. A whiff of her perfume, a sweet honeysuckle scent, invaded Elizabeth’s nose. “What for?”

“To try to talk to the ghost, of course!”

“Do you really think a ghost is responsible for this murder?” Elizabeth asked. Having a thrill sharing some scary stories was one thing, but this was a whole other level. “And wouldn’t a medium be more of a hindrance than a help when there’s a murder investigation going on?”

“Oh, well, it is as my brother said the other day. I mostly think that the stories are entertaining. And this is what this medium is going to bring, entertainment. A few séances to try and talk to the supposedly murderous spirit, that sort of thing. All in good fun. I don’t think the medium will want to interfere with the investigation.”

“Well, it might be fun, I guess,” Elizabeth said. In spite of herself, she was curious; she had never attended a séance before. “What’s the name of that medium?”

“I can’t tell you her real name, of course. Those people don’t tend to use their real names; they need something with a little more flare. From what I’ve heard, the one Lady Pickering has invited calls herself ‘Madame Edna.’”

\---

When Ciel got there, the card room was already almost full to its maximum capacity. It was a long, nicely-sized room, with multiple fireplaces, ornamented mirrors and portraits on the walls, and crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. Most people were gathered at round tables, playing cards, but others were standing by one of the fireplaces or in the corners, drinks in their hands, engrossed in conversations. The majority of the card players were men, but one of the tables at least had a lady, whose large bosom and boisterous voice made it difficult not to notice her. 

“Marvellous!” she was crying out. “What a daring player you are, my dear!”

The woman started laughing then, and the sound of that rumbustious laughter followed Ciel as he made his way through the room. When he found what—or rather _who_ — he had been looking for, he gritted his teeth and set course to that direction. As he got closer to his target, he slowed down his pace, making it less purposeful, and let his eyes wander around as though he wasn’t looking at anything in particular, but rather just observing his surroundings.

After a few minutes of this, he heard a familiar voice call out, “Oh, Lord Phantomhive! Please, you must join us.”

Ciel turned and looked at the table where the call had come from, and where sat Lord Blackwood and his friend Mr Hyde, as well as a third man of about the same age, who had dull brown hair and a pale, unremarkable face. 

Ciel approached the table. “Lord Blackwood,” he said, forcing himself to nod at the man. “Mr Hyde. What a pleasure.”

“Lord Phantomhive,” Blackwood said. “You arrive at a dire moment of need. I trust that you know how to play whist?”

“Rudolph,” Hyde hissed to his friend. “I’m not sure that—”

“I do know how to play,” Ciel said, “and I can see that you’re out of a man for the game. I don’t mean to intrude, but may I join you?”

“This was precisely what I was going to suggest!” From the way Blackwood’s eyes shone a little too brightly, and his speech was a little too loud, it looked like the man was drunk, although there were no glasses on the table. “Please, my lord, have a seat.”

Ciel sat down next to Lord Blackwood, acutely aware of the displeasure that radiated from Hyde on his right. Whether the unhappiness stemmed from Ciel’s intrusion or from the memory of his friend’s behaviour the day before, Ciel wasn’t sure. With a visible effort Hyde smoothed the emotion out of his face and addressed Ciel a cordial smile.

“Lord Phantomhive, please meet our friend, Lord Arthur King. Arthur, you may remember Lord Phantomhive? We have met him here in Bath some ten years ago, if I remember correctly.”

“How do you do,” Lord King murmured, his sad, drooping eyes examining Ciel with only the faintest curiosity. “I apologise, my lord, but I can’t say I remember us meeting before.”

“I don’t remember it either,” Ciel lied. “If your friends are correct, I was all but seven at the time, so I hope I may be forgiven for that oversight.”

“Arthur,” Blackwood said, “don’t tell me that you can’t remember the Phantomhive twins? Two identical boys looking like a pair of angels straight from the Gospel—I know that the image has stayed with me. One of them was sick, I think,” he added and looked at Ciel as though asking for confirmation.

“It was my brother,” Ciel said with some difficulty.

He had anticipated that topic of conversation given Lord Blackwood’s manner of introduction, but already he felt unwell, sweating abnormally. It had taken the whole afternoon to silence the screams in his head yesterday, but he’d hoped he would be all right if he were prepared for it. He wasn’t.

“Shouldn’t we start playing?” Hyde said a little too brightly to be convincing, and Ciel had to contain a shudder of gratitude at the intervention. “I’ll have to go back to my wife at some point. How do you want to make the teams?”

“Lord Phantomhive, would you mind being my partner?” Blackwood asked, smirking.

“Not at all,” Ciel said with the same levity, thinking, _I could have you killed. One word to Sebastian and you would be dead._

He clung to that thought like one would to a lifeline. Hyde looked anxiously from Ciel to Blackwood and then announced that he would deal, grabbing the deck of cards that was on the table. Lord King was casting Ciel sideway glances, as though trying to place him. At some point his eyes widened slightly and he turned to Hyde, who was still dealing the cards. Hyde returned his look, his mouth set in a grim line. 

Mr Hyde and Ciel switched places so that the partners of each team were facing one another, as per the usage. Hyde placed the last card of the deck face-up on the table as the trump suit, and the game began. At first, they played in relative silence. It wasn’t a comfortable, friendly sort of silence, but an awkward one, and if the three men had been friends for years as it seemed they had, then the tension could only be explained either by some fresh topic of contention between them, or by Ciel’s presence at the table—which begged the question of why Blackwood had invited Ciel to come and play with them in the first place. 

Partners at whist couldn’t talk to each other about the game, but there were ways of hinting to your partner about the kind of cards you had. After a couple of tricks, Ciel decided to test how good Blackwood was by leading a suit with six of spade as a way to signal that he had better cards in that suit. Blackwood responded well, and they managed to win the first hand. 

“I’m very happy with my choice of partner,” Blackwood declared. “You must have an excellent memory, my lord.”

Ciel heard an edge to the compliment, although it might have been his imagination. Even though Blackwood kept smiling the whole time, he didn’t exactly look happy. His mood was a dark one, almost angry. Ciel learned where the man’s intoxication came from when he witnessed him pull a flask from his jacket and take a swig from it. The more Blackwood drank, the angrier he became, while his friends sunk deeper into sullenness. 

_I must find a way to make them talk_ , Ciel thought. _Or else this would have been a spectacular waste of my time._

He laid his cards face down on the table, and said, “Gentlemen, I must apologise. I fear that I’m occupying a seat that isn’t mine and that you might be resenting my presence. Were you expecting a friend?”

This may have been too direct an enquiry, but at least it got him a reaction: King’s face fell and Blackwood’s became thunderous.

“Oh, please, don’t apologise, my lord,” Hyde said hurriedly, as if he feared one of his companions—most likely Blackwood—might say something ill-advised. “The apology must be ours—you are, indeed, occupying another’s seat, so to speak, but unfortunately that person won’t be coming. We—we used to play with another old friend, but he has just passed away. If we’re being bad company to you, it’s because we are mourning him. But, of course, you’re not at fault in the slightest.”

“Oh,” Ciel said. “How tragic. You have my condolences.”

“Don’t try to pretend you didn’t know, Phantomhive,” Blackwood said heatedly. “Haven’t you come here precisely to—”

He cut himself off when Hyde grabbed his forearm and squeezed it, hard enough to cause pain if Blackwood’s grimace was any indication. King’s placidity was also starting to crack, and he was looking at his friends in alarm.

“Please, Benjamin, Rudolph, you have to calm yourselves,” he said. “What’s Lord Phantomhive going to think?”

Ciel held up a hand in a gesture of appeasement. “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “Grief will make one act out of sorts. I understand perfectly. I have no idea of who your friend was, but—”

“I’m sure you’ve heard of Earl Walter Clarey’s death,” Blackwood said, looking at Ciel with narrow eyes. He wasn’t smiling at all, now. “It’s been all of the gossipers’ favourite topic. The murderous ghost!”

“I have indeed heard of Lord Clarey’s murder,” Ciel said. “I didn’t know he was your friend, though. Again, I am very sorry for your loss.”

“And you would know all about loss, wouldn’t you,” Blackwood said viciously. “I wonder what it feels like to be the only half left of a whole.”

The smile was back on his face, savage and cruel, and his keen eyes were focused on Ciel’s face, avidly reading his reactions. _He’s trying to unsettle me,_ Ciel realised, but it wasn’t enough to see it for the tactic not to work. Ciel hoped they couldn’t read on his face the black panic that swirled at the edge of his mind, where he did his best to keep it. His hands had been folded over each other since he’d laid down his cards, and it was a good thing he was wearing gloves because it meant they couldn’t see his fingers turning bloodless from the overreaching effort he made to keep them still. 

Fortunately, Hyde saved him from having to answer. “That’s enough!” he snapped. “I won’t let you keep being so rude to Lord Phantomhive. I’m sorry, my lord. Our friend’s death has taken a toll on all of us.”

“And the ghost,” King murmured almost inaudibly. 

“I understand,” Ciel said to Hyde, pretending he hadn’t heard King’s comment. “I think I’d better retire now, even if it pains me to leave a game unfinished.”

“Since you and Rudolph were most definitely winning, I can’t say I’m unhappy with leaving it unfinished,” Hyde said with forced joviality.

Ciel murmured a few more civilities before he left, feeling Lord Blackwood’s eyes bear a hole between his shoulder blades. Why was the man so hostile to him? Ciel had gone in expecting the men to be guarded, because he had seen pictures in Lord Clarey’s study and knew that the four were friends, but that level of animosity was surprising and highly suspicious. It had looked as though Blackwood was accusing Ciel of something. Of knowing information about Lord Clarey’s murder? Of being somehow _responsible_ for it? What kind of sense did that make? Ciel had met Lord Clarey once ten years ago, when the man was a teenager and he was only seven years old. What sort of motive did Blackwood think he had? But, unless Blackwood was a terrific actor, his behaviour tonight seemed to indicate two things: one, that he probably wasn’t responsible for his friend’s death; and two, that he knew, or thought he knew something about why it had happened, even if he was pinning it wrongly on Ciel. Something that had happened ten years ago, then? Ciel’s memories of that time were so blurry that they weren’t much help for now.

Lost in thoughts, Ciel had made his way back into the ballroom without taking note of his surroundings. When he came back to himself he saw Sieglinde and Elizabeth chatting with each other a little further away, and he walked toward them. By the time he had reached them black spots were flitting in front of his eyes and he had to grab the back of an empty chair next to Elizabeth to keep himself from falling over. He released a loud breath, realising only now that he’d been holding it since leaving the card room. 

“Ciel?” Elizabeth said, the sound of her voice strangely distant. “Are you all right? Are you feeling ill? Come and sit down.”

Ciel complied, feeling a little faint. It was too hot in the room, and the sounds, the lights, and the perfumes were all an aggression to his senses.

“Shall we go?” he asked. Wait, what time was it? Had they been here long? “No, you’ll want to dance more. I don’t think I can—”

“Ciel.” Elizabeth slid a slim hand into the crook of his elbow. A few blond curls danced at the edge of his vision field. “I’ve had my fill of dancing and I fear that Sieglinde might be bored. Let’s go now.”

They went back to the Royal Crescent, at which point Ciel saw that it wasn’t even ten o’clock. Instead of going to bed immediately they settled in the parlour and Sebastian served them chamomile tea. Ciel gave a succinct account of his card game with Lord Clarey’s old friends, and the girls told him about the medium who was supposed to arrive in town soon. 

“A medium?” Ciel said. “What a bother. This is going to agitate people’s spirits and Inspector Carmichael will be breathing down my neck, wanting me to get results.”

“Flora seems to think it’s a harmless form of entertainment,” Elizabeth said. 

“The entertainment value is double-edged when it involves a murder. But who knows, it might not be so bad.”

Before he went to bed, Ciel’s eyes were caught by an empty cast-iron console table in the front hall.

“Sebastian,” he called. “Wasn’t there a statuette on that console table?”

Sebastian looked thoughtfully at the console table. “I think you’re right, young master.”

“Find it. I’d rather not have to add it to our bill for the house.”

“Yes, my lord.”

That night Ciel dreamt of a man standing by the side of a path, the man’s form glowing with a pale, ethereal light. When he came close enough to see the man’s face, Ciel saw that it was Lord Clarey’s grimacing death mask.


	5. Chapter 5

The examination of the tonic Ciel had stolen from Lord Clarey’s study proved fruitful: there wasn’t much left in the bottle, but when Sieglinde made it drink to the rat she had Sebastian capture for her—that man was never fazed by even the most peculiar requests—the poor creature died in a matter of minutes. 

“As I thought,” Ciel said, looking satisfied at the result. “This was most likely an insider’s job, because the culprit had to have access to Lord Clarey’s tonic and know about his habits. At the very least, one of the servants was bribed.”

Over the next two days, Ciel spent hours poring over the reports Inspector Carmichael had provided him, of the results of the post mortem examination—Sieglinde’s conclusion had been confirmed—of the interviews the police had made of all the servants, of their unproductive efforts to find where the strychnine added to the tonic had been bought from. Their house at Royal Crescent had been originally rented for five days, but when they reached the end of that time period Ciel decided to prolong it to give himself more time for the investigation. 

While Ciel was growing more and more frustrated with his lack of progress, Sieglinde and Elizabeth had to find their own entertainment. They went back to the Pump Room, and Sieglinde secured a sample of the water in one of her vials. They went on long walks together, visited the baths again, and had tea with the Collinses. There they heard all about the new medium, Madame Edna, who was the latest delight for Bath’s locals and visitors both. 

“She’s staying with Lady Pickering,” Flora told them. “It’s an old and creaking house, the perfect sort of place for visiting ghosts. Lady Pickering has been adamantly opposed to electricity since it has been introduced in Bath a few years ago, and the gaslights make for a delicious atmosphere. Oh, Andrew, we absolutely must go!”

Her brother groaned, and said in a tired voice that meant they’d had this argument already, “They’re all cheap tricks, Flora. It’s a waste of money.”

“Oh, curse your miserliness. Madame Edna is only asking for a shilling; I think this is worth the entertainment. I heard Lady Pickering had a very dramatic reunion with her late husband during one of the séances. Given what I’ve heard about their tumultuous relationship when he was alive, I know I would pay more than one shilling to witness that sort of thing. Elizabeth, Sieglinde.” Flora turned her pleading eyes toward them. “Would you like to attend one of those séances with me?”

“I know I would be curious to see one,” Sieglinde said earnestly. Everything she’d heard about Madame Edna’s séances sounded a little too dramatic to be truthful, but even then, it might still be fun.

“So would I,” Lizzie said. 

“Splendid!” Flora exclaimed, clapping her hands. “See, Andrew, not everyone is as dull as you are.”

“And a good thing it is, my darling sister,” Mr Collins replied laughingly, leaning in to give her a kiss on the cheek. “Lady Elizabeth, Lady Sieglinde, you have my deepest gratitude for saving me the attendance of a séance.”

He smiled charmingly at them, and Sieglinde gave herself a moment to appreciate his handsome form. She spent too much time inside her lab in London, and sometimes she got one of those urges that were never proper for ladies to satiate, desires that they weren’t even supposed to have. Lately the frustration had grown stronger; she had almost kissed Lizzie the other day at the baths, although she hoped her friend hadn’t noticed. She mustn’t slip that way again, and looking at Mr Collins was a pleasant and harmless occupation. But when she looked over at Lizzie she was surprised to see her react to Mr Collins’ smile with a slight blush. Could Lizzie be finding herself attracted to Andrew Collins? Lizzie’s devotion to Ciel was so absolute that it was difficult to imagine, but maybe she felt one of those urges too. Sieglinde looked again at Mr Collins, whose attention seemed a little more focused on Lizzie than on her, and suddenly she wanted to command him to stop looking at her friend that way. 

“You’re welcome,” she said to him, maybe a little more dryly than she had intended. “But our motives are purely selfish. I believe we will derive much entertainment from meeting Madame Edna.”

When they told him about their endeavour Ciel didn’t have any objection, and barely even made fun of it. In fact, it was clear that his attention wasn’t fully on them, but on the myriad of documents spread on the coffee table in front of him. His hair was dishevelled, as if he’d combed his fingers through it too many times and pulled at it, and there was a tea stain on the cuff of his shirt. 

“Sebastian!” he called irritably, looking as if he’d forgotten Sieglinde and Lizzie were there. “I can’t find my pencil anywhere again!”

“You must have left it in the library, my lord,” Sebastian said.

“I’m positive I didn’t leave it in the library. I was working on those files yesterday evening, but now I can’t find that blasted pencil!”

Sieglinde and Lizzie tried to help Ciel look for the lost item amongst the piles of papers but then Sebastian came back with the pencil in his hand. 

“Look what I found, master,” he said. “In the library, just where it was the last time you lost it.”

Ciel went very still, his eyes fixed on the offending object, the look on his face the sign of an impending storm. Sieglinde and Lizzie shared a look, and, on a tacit agreement, left the room so butler and master could settle the matter in private. It was time for them to get ready for the séance, which they did in Lizzie’s room with Paula’s help. 

“Ciel looks so stressed out,” Lizzie said concernedly as Paula helped her lace her corset. It was difficult for Sieglinde not to look her way too often. “To think that this trip was supposed to be relaxing for him! I couldn’t have made a worse choice.”

“He’s frustrated because he’s going nowhere with this case for the moment,” Sieglinde said, smoothing the fabric of the chemise she had just put on. “Once he gets a lead he will feel much better.”

“It doesn’t help that things keep getting lost in this house!” Paula said, giving a last tug to the strings of Lizzie’s corset. “I know I keep losing track of the pots and pans in the kitchen. Wolfgang looked about to murder someone yesterday when he couldn’t find a shoe brush! And Sebastian is always gone God knows where lately, so he isn’t much help. It’s normal for Lord Phantomhive to get irritable.”

“I didn’t know it was this bad,” Lizzie said. “I guess it’s not unusual to need some time to get used to a new house, but—”

“But this is very curious nonetheless,” Sieglinde said, completing her friend’s thought. 

They looked at each other, sharing their confusion. Lizzie’s loose hair was spread in golden curls over her bare shoulders, and, despite the tension of the moment, all Sieglinde wanted was to brush her lips over the roundness of one of those shoulders. 

“Do you think—” Lizzie started hesitantly. “Remember what Sebastian told us about Lord Clarey’s haunting?”

“Objects kept being misplaced,” Sieglinde said, forcibly looking away from her friend’s shoulders. “You don’t mean that—”

“Wait, what are you saying, my lady?” Paula asked, hands folded over her heart. “Do you think there’s a _ghost_ in the house?”

“No!” Lizzie exclaimed, waving her hands. “Of course not. That would be ridiculous, right? Forget I said anything, Paula; I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

Paula didn’t look terribly convinced, but she dropped the topic and helped Lizzie with her petticoats. In the carriage they’d rented to take them to Lady Pickering’s house, where the séance would take place, Sieglinde thought again about the possibility of a ghost. It seemed remarkable that everybody would keep losing things; Wolfram was, to be perfectly honest, not the most organised person, but Paula had been in service most of her life, and Ciel wasn’t an airhead, even if stress and frustration could be getting to him. On the other hand, Sieglinde would have expected to feel more… _something_ more if she were sharing a house with a ghost. Wouldn’t she get goose bumps, or feel the cold finger of death brushing the back of her neck at odd moments? If there really was a ghost in their house, then it was of a terribly boring sort. 

Lady Pickering’s house, as Flora had advertised, was appropriately old and ominous. They followed a long alley bordered by cypresses and saw it loom dark and tall against the cloudy sky, a sixteenth century limestone manor house whose façade was eaten away by ivy. A gloomy butler opened the door, and his long face and absence of a smile made Sieglinde wonder if his mistress had ordered him to adopt an attitude suitable to the circumstances. The mistress in question, Lady Pickering, was anything but gloomy. In her early forties, she was a large and buoyant presence who had taken heartily to widowhood. She wore a dress of lilac satin, with a much deeper cleavage than Sieglinde was used to see in fashionable dresses in this country, and her head was adorned with a complex composition of feathers.

“Flora!” she exclaimed with an enthusiasm that startled Sieglinde, who hadn’t thought that Flora knew Lady Pickering that intimately. “How wonderful of you to come! And who are your delightful friends?” She batted heavily painted eyes at Sieglinde and Lizzie. “Welcome, welcome, my dears!”

Flora introduced them to their hostess and they were all invited to move to the sitting room, where the séance would happen. It was very dimly lit, as the gaslights had been turned down to minimal brightness, and the furniture had been pushed to the sides, making room for a large, bare round table. At the back of the room stood a man who was setting a camera, and, when Flora expressed her surprise at his presence, Lady Pickering explained, “Charlie is here to document the séance. I’m sure you know how ghosts will sometimes appeared on photographs?”

“I’ve heard of spirit photographs, yes,” Flora said. 

“Well, if we’re lucky, Charlie here will manage to catch one tonight. Wouldn’t it be great, Charlie dear?”

“Indeed, my lady.”

They were invited to sit around the table, along with the three other guests, two men and one woman. While they were all waiting for the medium to come in and start the séance, Lady Pickering took care of the introductions. The woman, Mrs Emily Darlington, was an old woman in full mourning dress with a pale, wrinkly face, who periodically dabbed her dry eyes with a richly embroidered handkerchief. The men were both young; the youngest of the two had an open, freckled face, and Lady Pickering introduced him as Mr Morgan Miller, who worked as a locksmith. The other one was a drab, flavourless man named Lord Arthur King. With some surprise, Sieglinde remembered that he was one of the men Ciel had played cards with, and a friend of the late Lord Clarey. Was he hoping that the medium would help him reach his friend? Although everyone was polite, there was an unmistakable tension among the group as they all waited for the show to commence, a shiver of anticipation that they were all trying to hide.

“I have to warn everyone that I don’t put much faith in that kind of thing,” Mr Miller said, a hint of nervous laughter to his voice. He had sparkling, humorous eyes. “It’s all tricks, I think, but I was curious anyway.”

“I’m not sure I’m much of a believer either,” Lord King said, almost apologetic. “I just wanted—I had to make sure—”

“Won’t a lack of faith from some of the participants affect Madame Edna’s channelling?” Mrs Darlington asked Lady Pickering anxiously. “I’ve heard that—”

“We welcome all sorts of participants, from the believers to the curious, to the staunch non-believer,” Lady Pickering said, addressing the group. Her expression gave Sieglinde the feeling that for her, the entertainment had started already. “But, Mrs Darlington, if you’re worried about it, you can try to compensate for our non-believers by putting all your faith into the séance. I’m sure Madame Edna will appreciate the help.”

Mrs Darlington nodded fervently, and Sieglinde caught her murmuring under her breath, “I believe you’re here, my dear Victor. I believe you can talk to me.”

Lady Pickering patted the old woman patronizingly on the hand. “Now, my darlings,” she said to the group, “If you will excuse me for a moment, I will go and see whether Madame Edna is ready to appear in front of you.”

She came back only a few minutes later, holding a woman by the hand, and presented her to the audience like a proud mother. The woman looked rather young, maybe in her mid or late twenties, and she wore a simple, conservative dress that contrasted starkly with Lady Pickering’s flamboyant appearance. Her dark was very dark and her skin very pale, like Snow White from the Grimms’ tale. The young woman, Madame Edna, sat at the only empty seat left at the table, between Lady Pickering and Mr Miller.

She pointed at an unlit candle, the only object on the table, and said, “When I light this candle, the séance will have started.” She had a low, melodious voice, but her elocution was strange, almost like an accent that Sieglinde couldn’t identify. “Is everyone ready?”

“Ah, uh,” said Mr Miller with an embarrassed grimace. “I don’t want to offend, miss, but do you mind if I look a little more around the room, under the table? I just want to make sure there’s no hidden tricks in here.”

Madame Edna smiled. “If it will make you feel better, then please, by all means.”

The young man stood up and walked around the room, knocking on the walls, looking behind the furniture, under the rug. After he went back to his seat, he patted the underside of the table and then, finally, declared himself satisfied. Madame Edna nodded at him with a small smile, as though he’d just done her a favour. 

“Very well,” she said and proceeded to light the candle. “Ladies, remove your gloves. I want everyone to hold the hands of the persons sitting next to them.”

Sieglinde took Lizzie’s hand on her right, and Lord King’s on her left. When Mr Miller took Madame Edna’s hand, he chuckled and said jokingly, “I’ve got you, so you better not try anything!”

Madame Edna smiled again, but it looked slightly less indulgent this time. “Shush, now. We’re about to begin.”

“Oh, right. Sorry.”

“Now, I want all of you to calm your minds and steady your breaths.” The light of the candle made her pale face look like a wax mask, her eyes shadowed and darker than a moment before. “We’re trying to attract spirits, and any violent emotions are likely to scare them away.”

No one said anything for a long moment as they were all probably trying to do what the medium was telling them, or at least to make a passable imitation of it. It was hard to look at each other without feeling awkward, so instinctively everyone’s eyes dropped to the table. Sieglinde did the same, focusing her attention on the way the dim lights were blurrily reflected on the polished surface. 

“If you want to attract a particular spirit, then I suggest that you start thinking very hard about them,” Madame Edna said. “And now, everyone closes their eyes.”

“But—”

“Mr Miller, _please_ ,” said Mrs Darlington. “You’re going to put off the spirits.”

Sieglinde closed her eyes just as Mr Miller mumbled an apology. She could feel her heart start beating faster from anticipation. For a moment, the only sounds were of the participants’ breathings, some quicker and harsher than others. 

And then, “I call to the spirits beyond the veil. Our dear departed, the people we loved and lost, but whose souls are still within our reach. We are gathered around this table with our minds and our hearts open wide to you.” There was a warm, soothing quality to the rumble of Madame Edna’s voice, almost hypnotic; it started low but then rose progressively like the wind in a storm, the words coming out more hurried and intense: “Come to me, spirits. I will be your channel to the material world, your servant, the faithful interpreter of your words. My voice, my body is yours, the instrument of your will, so come, come, come to me, and show yourself!”

The last words were shouted, and the silence that followed had a density of its own. No one spoke, but Sieglinde felt Lizzie’s fingers curl around hers more tightly and she squeezed back just as hard. On her other side, Lord King’s palm was slick with sweat. She found that she’d stopped breathing, and had to force herself to draw a breath.

“Spirit,” Madame Edna said, her voice barely above a murmur. “Are you there?”

Sieglinde felt a drift of cold air to the back of her neck, and she shivered. Lord King’s hand wriggled in Sieglinde’s grip, as if he wanted to slip out of it and escape, but then the silence was broken as a loud thud resounded, making the group gasp like a single entity. 

“What—” Mr Miller said, but he was shushed by several of the other participants.

“Spirit,” Madame Edna said. 

Another thud could be heard, then, this time more localized, coming from somewhere behind Sieglinde. She risked opening an eye and saw a blob of light swirl over their heads. Startled, she closed her eyes again.

“Spirit, I am going to ask you questions. You will answer with one knock for yes, and two for no.”

One knock, and it sounded like it came from right under the table. Lord King jumped and hit his knee against one of the table’s legs, letting a muffled curse escape him. 

“Spirit, do you mean us harm?” Two knocks. “Were you moved by love to come and try to communicate with us?” One knock. “Is it love for one of tonight’s participants?” One knock.

“Victor!” Mrs Darlington cried out. “Oh, Victor, is that you?”

“Mrs Darlington, please, contain yourself,” Lady Pickering reprimanded her in a rushed murmur.

“This spirit is strong,” Madame Edna said. “Its wish to speak out is very powerful. I can feel— _oh_.”

Flora gasped, saying, “I think I felt something touch me!”

“Nobody moves!” Madame Edna said, her voice almost a growl. “The spirit is trying to communicate. I can feel it!” 

She let out a shocked cry and then a voice rose that sounded nothing like Madame Edna’s. “ _Emily_ ,” the voice said. It sounded old and withered, rustling like old parchment, but it was definitely male. “ _My dear Emily._ ”

Sieglinde opened her eyes a sliver and saw that Madame Edna’s head had dropped, her chin tucked against her chest, and that she didn’t appear to be speaking. More lights floated over the table, and when one of them got too close to Sieglinde, she closed her eyes again, feeling genuinely scared for the first time.

“Victor!” Mrs Darlington exclaimed, and this time no one stopped her. “Are you really here?”

“ _Yessss_.”

“Victor, oh, my dear Victor. But, how can I be sure? Tell me, what was I wearing the day we first met?”

“ _A dress of—cotton. Blue._ ”

“Yes, yes! And what was in my hair?”

“ _Flower_ —”

“Yes, a daisy! Oh, my darling, I miss you so much.”

“ _Miss you too._ ”

A little sob escaped Mrs Darlington. “Will we be reunited in the next life?” she asked tremulously. 

“ _Yes—I am waiting—_ ” The sentence was interrupted by a gasp, this time coming from Madame Edna, and it was Madame Edna who spoke next, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t hold onto him anymore.”

“Please, Madame Edna, just a moment longer.”

“I don’t have the energy. But I can still feel his presence; if you ask him a yes or no question, he might still be able to answer. Choose carefully.”

There was a moment of pause, before Mrs Darlington asked slowly, “Victor, do you think young Albert Blackwell is a well-suited match for our daughter?” One knock answered her, and Mrs Darlington hummed in approbation. “I think so too. Goodbye, my darling.”

No knock or sound of any kind, this time. Mrs Darlington called pleadingly for Victor to no avail.

“He’s gone,” Madame Edna said softly, sounding exhausted. “But I could feel his love for you.”

“Thank you, Madame Edna. Thank you so much for your intervention.”

“You’re very welcome. I thereby declare this séance over.” Sieglinde heard the sound of the woman blowing a breath and then she said, “Everyone may open their eyes now.”

When Sieglinde opened her eyes, she noticed that the gaslights had been turned brighter, and she had to blink a few times before her eyes were accustomed to the new lighting. The candle was extinguished, a fine plume of smoke rising from the blackened wick. Madame Edna slowly got to her feet, both hands on the table for support, but then she swayed and was caught by Mr Miller.

“Madame Edna!” the young man exclaimed. “Oh, are you all right?”

“I’m just tired,” Madame Edna said.

“Channelling the dead is always a very taxing endeavour,” Lady Pickering said. “I’m going to ring for Freddy, and he will take her back to her room.”

Freddy, who turned out to be the sinister butler, came to escort Madame Edna back to her room, leaving Lady Pickering to take care of the aftermath of the séance. 

“Well, my lovelies,” she said. “I hope you enjoyed our time with Madame Edna. My dear Mrs Darlington, how are you doing, truly?”

Mrs Darlington hadn’t stopped dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief since the end of the séance, although this time Sieglinde could see actual tears.

“This was wonderful, but all too short,” she said, sniffing mournfully. “Would it be possible… another séance—a private one, maybe?”

“We’ll discuss this later,” Lady Pickering said, patting the old woman on the arm. “But the night isn’t quite over, everyone! Let’s have a look at what Charlie captured. Are you ready to show us, Charlie?”

At the far back of the room, Charlie was busily buried under the black cloth of a portable dark room. Next to the dark room was a small wooden table with a basin on it. Sieglinde could smell the potassium cyanide that filled the basin from where she stood. 

“In a few minutes, my lady!” he said, his voice coming out muffled. 

While they waited for the photographer, Lady Pickering did a tour of the room, discreetly asking everyone for the shilling Madame Edna was owed for the séance. Sieglinde wondered whether all the money went to the medium, or if Lady Pickering took a share out of it. 

When Charlie emerged from under the black cloth he held a glass plate in his hands that he plunged into one of the basins. 

“Come and see!” he called to the group. 

They gathered around him in a circle, and Sieglinde watched as Charlie gently shook the basin until the bluish negative turned into a warm positive image. On the picture, the group was holding hands, their head bowed and their eyes closed. Sieglinde couldn’t see herself very well, because the angle the picture had been taken from meant that she was partially hidden behind Lord King, but this was far from the most noteworthy element about the photograph.

“Oh, look at this!” Flora said, pointing at the picture. 

Above the centre of the table floated a vaguely human-like form—you could identify arms and legs and a head, although it was featureless. It looked dark at first, when the photograph was still in negative, but then it whitened until it was a pale blurry form, arguably male or at least not wearing female garments. 

“Victor!” Mrs Darlington shrieked, close enough to Sieglinde’s ear that she winced. “This has to be Victor, right?”

“I’m guessing it is,” Mr Miller said. “But what is this, then?”

The image was now perfectly clear, and everyone could see that there was a second ghostly form, fainter than the first but also humanoid, and that it was standing right behind Lord King. Something crashed behind them and Sieglinde whipped around, along with the rest of the group. It was only Lord King, who had walked backward into a chair. His eyes were wide with fear, his pale face glistening with sweat and his mouth open in shock.

“What—what is the meaning of this?” he stuttered, pointing a trembling finger at Charlie’s worktable.

“You’d have to ask Madame Edna, as she’s the expert,” Lady Pickering said. “But if I had to guess, I would say that you have a spirit attached to you, although it didn’t wish to communicate during the séance. I wouldn’t worry too much, my dear man; most spirits are of a friendly nature.”

“And what happens when they’re not?” Lord King asked in a raw whisper. 

Lady Pickering blinked at him, looking a tad uncertain. “Ah, well.” She managed to manufacture a bright smile and advanced toward him, holding out a hand. “You look a little tense, dear fellow. Would you care for a drink?”

“No, no,” Lord King mumbled, flinching away from her. “I have—I need to—”

He fled the room before he managed to form a coherent sentence, leaving the rest of the group to puzzle over his behaviour.

“Oh, well,” Lady Pickering said in the ensuing awkward silence. “Some people can’t handle the intensity brought by a séance. To communicate with the dead, you need emotional stability. But let me extend my offer to everyone: who wishes for a drink?”


	6. Chapter 6

“All in all, it was fun,” Flora said in the carriage bringing them back, “but I have to confess to some disappointment.”

Elizabeth looked at her, confused. “What were you disappointed about? We got a spirit, which I hear isn’t a given in every séance.”

“Oh, I know, and I’m glad for that. It’s just—well. Mrs Darlington’s reunion with her husband was very sweet, but it wasn’t—”

“Dramatic enough?” Sieglinde supplied.

Flora winced. “It makes me sound like an awful person, doesn’t it? It’s just, I thought when Madame Edna’s arrival was announced that she would try to talk with the murderous ghost. That would have been an experience. What about the two of you? Did you enjoy the evening?”

“It was instructive,” Sieglinde said in a cautious voice that told Elizabeth that she had more to say, but wouldn’t do it in front of Flora.

“It was certainly intense,” Elizabeth said. “I didn’t expect the—the atmosphere. Very impressive.”

She hadn’t expected the séance to shake her quite so much, as she had gone into it only knowing a vague outline of how it worked. She wasn’t equipped to be able to tell whether it could have been faked, but it had felt _real_ somehow, and she found herself wondering what it would be like to manage to talk to her aunt, her uncle. Her cousin. 

“I’m very grateful that the two of you accepted to accompany me,” Flora said with a smile, holding out her hands to both Elizabeth and Sieglinde. “Who knows, maybe I’ll manage to convince Andrew to go back with me! He can be such a bore, sometimes. Not that I’m not grateful for him.” Flora looked hesitant all of a sudden, and Elizabeth didn’t understand why until she added, her voice uncharacteristically soft, “It must have been really hard for your fiancé, losing a twin. I cannot imagine losing Andrew, no matter how much I complain about him.”

“It was years ago,” Elizabeth said stiffly. 

The last thing she wanted was to discuss how Ciel had coped with becoming twin-less; she liked Flora, but this wasn’t anyone else’s business. 

“Even then,” Flora said. “It obviously still pains him very much.”

“I would be grateful if you didn’t mention—”

“Oh, of course not! I would never dream of it. Forgive me, I see that the topic has made you uncomfortable. Let’s forget about the dead for the rest of the evening.”

She smiled, then, the same kind of disarming smile that her twin possessed, and Elizabeth could do nothing but smile back. They left Flora at her lodgings and went back to the Royal Crescent. There, they found Ciel still awake and working. When he heard them come in, he appeared at the door between the front hall and the first parlour, arms crossed over his chest, watching as Wolfram helped them with their coats. 

“How was your conversation with the dead?”

“It was worth attending,” Sieglinde said. “The identity of one the participant is of particular interest to you.”

Ciel’s eye narrowed. “Tell me.”

They sat in the parlour and Sieglinde and Elizabeth took turns at giving Ciel a detailed account of the séance. On the pedestal table next to him was a steaming cup of lavender tea, which told Elizabeth that he probably had a headache, but he listened to them with attention. As expected, the mention of Lord King’s presence brought a new light to his eye.

“Hmm. As you said, this is interesting. I feel like everything that happened in the séance can be easily explained by some sleights of hand and a good sense for drama. Mrs Darlington practically fed the so-called spirit his lines.”

“It was very intense to live through,” Sieglinde said. “But I agree with you. Even the lights I saw could be the results of some object dipped in phosphorescent paint and suspended to a fishing line. Madame Edna must have some abilities as a ventriloquist that allowed her to make it look like a spirit was talking.”

Elizabeth said nothing, feeling very stupid. She didn’t think herself an idiot, but sometimes being around Ciel and Sieglinde, who were both so brilliant in their own ways, made her feel inadequate. She had been taken in by the atmosphere of the séance and the ‘drama’ surrounding it, more than she’d expected to be. She was probably the sort of dupe the medium counted on.

“I’m not sure about the photograph, though,” Ciel said. “Can you think of a way it could have been achieved, Sullivan?”

Sieglinde rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “Double exposure, I’d guess.”

“Explain,” Ciel commanded.

“He used the collodion process, so if he inserted a positive glass plate featuring another image in front of the unused sensitive glass plate, then an impression from that glass plate would be left on the new picture. We didn’t see him prepare. No one, not even Mr Miller, asked to look at his equipment.”

“It would mean that the photographer purposefully tried to trick us, then?” Elizabeth said, trying not to be left out of the conversation.

“Necessarily,” Ciel said. “As well as Lady Pickering. At least they’re complicit to the fraud, which doesn’t really concern us.”

“If they’re scamming people out of their money, shouldn’t we do something about it?” Elizabeth protested.

“A lot of people will go to this sort of séance for the entertainment, as Miss Collins did,” Ciel said dismissively. “Entertainment is something those who can afford it will gladly pay more than a shilling for.”

“What about Mrs Darlington? It wasn’t about entertainment for her; she thought she was talking to her dead husband!”

Ciel looked at her, his one blue eye cold and hard. “And what good do you think it would do to her if she were to be told that it didn’t really happen? If she wants to fool herself into thinking that she can talk to the dead, then she can very well pay the money for it.”

He looked away, his mouth pulling down. Elizabeth’s cheeks were hot from frustration at his cynicism, but she could tell an argument on this point would lead nowhere. He had the same pinched, exhausted air to him that had pushed her into organizing this ill-advised trip. Despite his visible weariness, he still looked so lovely that something in Elizabeth’s chest ached at the sight. The grace of his profile, the line of his neck, made her want things that she wasn’t sure how to process. How could she be annoyed with him and still want so much? But, if she tried to reach out and touch him, she knew how it would be received; on a good day, he would grumble and tolerate her physical affection, but this wasn’t a good day. Sieglinde was looking at her with inquisitive eyes, and Elizabeth gave her small reassuring smile. 

Sieglinde flicked a strand of hair behind her ear and asked Ciel, all business again, “What do you think of this photograph and Lord King’s reaction to it?” 

“Well, the photograph is what makes me think that this could be more than a simple fraud. As for Lord King, he’s obviously hiding something, but this is no news to me. Actually—Sebastian!” he called. 

He hadn’t raised his voice much, but when Elizabeth looked, Sebastian had materialised into the doorway with the quiet efficiency that characterised him. 

“My lord?” he enquired. 

“Where did Lord King go after the séance?”

“He went to see Lord Blackwood, master, and he left about half-an-hour later.”

“What—” Sieglinde turned wide eyes toward Ciel. “Did you have Sebastian watch us?”

“Not you,” Ciel said, “but Lord Blackwood, Lord King, and Mr Hyde. I’ve had him keep an eye on them for the past two days, but so far nothing very interesting has come up. Until tonight.”

“So, you already knew about Lord King being at the séance?” Elizabeth asked, feeling on edge again.

Ciel shook his head. “No, I hadn’t had the time to hear Sebastian’s report before you came back. Good job, Sebastian,” he said with the hint of a satisfied smile.

Sebastian acknowledged his master with a bow and then slipped out of the room. Elizabeth watched him leave, wondering how he could possibly ‘keep an eye’ on three different men. Sebastian had always been very competent, but this feat seemed almost inhuman. 

“The three friends are obviously hiding something,” Ciel said. “As soon as he saw the ghostly figure behind him on the picture, Lord King immediately thought of a specific spirit, someone he feared would pursue him in death. There are a few important questions.” He counted them off his fingers. “Who was that person? How is he or she related to Lord Clarey’s death? And also, was it really a coincidence if that silhouette appeared on the photograph? What’s the medium’s role in all this? Whatever happened, I have a feeling it happened ten years ago.”

“Why ten years ago?” Elizabeth asked.

“Lord Blackwood seemed awfully certain that I was related to his friend’s death. The only time I was in contact with those men was ten years ago.” Ciel frowned as though something bothered him. “Also, I think—”

A loud noise like a door slamming shut interrupted him. It sounded like it had come from upstairs, and they all startled and reflexively looked up. 

“What on earth—” Ciel murmured. “Sebastian!”

Sebastian came in and said, “We’re checking upstairs, young master.”

“So, it wasn’t one of you?”

“No,” Sebastian said, his expression inscrutable. “We were all down in the kitchen.”

“How could a door slam on its own?” Ciel asked impatiently. “Was there an open window?”

“There shouldn’t have been,” Sebastian said. “I checked myself earlier. But Wolfram went upstairs to look.”

They waited for a few long, excruciating minutes for Wolfram to come back downstairs. Maybe it was because the mysterious atmosphere from the séance was still clinging to her despite Sieglinde’s and Ciel’s rational explanations, but Elizabeth’s heart had jumped in her chest when she’d heard the door slam and she still couldn’t quiet it. It was just a door, she told herself firmly. Wolfram would be there in a moment and explain that a window had been left open, and then they could all laugh about it and go to bed.

Just as she was thinking this, Wolfram’s large frame filled the doorway. “All the windows are closed,” he said. 

Ciel’s jaw clenched visibly. “Then there was an intruder. Search the house!”

More time was spent searching the house, but they could find no intruder. They couldn’t find any sign that someone had broken entrance either, and the slamming door remained a mystery. They weren’t even sure which door it had been, only that the noise had come from upstairs, probably the first floor, and had been heard by everyone. They had not collectively hallucinated this, and yet they couldn’t find a rational explanation.

“Ciel,” Elizabeth told her fiancé, who was nursing his cup of lavender tea with a furious expression on his face; intrusion on somewhere he considered his territory wasn’t something he handled well. “Earlier tonight, Sieglinde and I were thinking how… odd it was that objects keep getting lost in this house. Remember how Lord Clarey’s haunting started this way?”

She thought he was going to get angry at her implied suggestion, but he only said flatly, “We’re not being haunted. This has to be something else.”

“Maybe it is, but do you think that this is a coincidence?”

He sighed. “Probably not. But we won’t solve this right now, so I think we should all go to bed.”

Later in her room, as Paula helped her get ready for bed, Elizabeth still couldn’t shake her unease. Tonight, the notion of a ghost had gone from a philosophical consideration to something that felt disturbingly real.

“My lady,” Paula whispered fearfully as she brushed her hair. “You don’t think it was a ghost, earlier with the door? It can’t be, right?”

“Of course not, Paula.”

“Of course not,” Paula repeated and then she emitted a forced little laugh that was too shaky to fool anyone. “But—” She pitched her voice so low as to be barely audible. “If it is, what do you think it wants?”

What, indeed? Looking into her heart with no self-delusion, Elizabeth could acknowledge that she was afraid, raw, genuine fear that she hadn’t ever known before. Because you couldn’t slice a ghost with a sword, and if this spirit was malevolent, then what could she do to protect Ciel and Sieglinde, whose wonderful minds were contained in frail, breakable bodies?

“I’m tired, Paula,” Elizabeth said. “I would like to go to bed.”

“Oh, of course, my lady.”

But as much as she wished for sleep, it took her a long time to find it, and she spent hours looking at the shadows on the ceiling of her room, an ear out for any strange noise. Every creak from the house, every murmur from the outside made her heart beat faster, and her mind was as restless as any ghost. She fell asleep close to dawn, struck down by exhaustion. 

\---

There was no other suspicious door activity during the night, but Ciel still didn’t sleep very well, his mind busy reviewing all the facts and turning around a thousand of questions. He refused to entertain the possibility that the house might be haunted. People died, and that was it. There was no lingering presence, no communication from beyond the veil, no ‘unfinished business’ that tethered the souls of the departed to the material world. If a violent death could turn people into ghosts, then he should have spent the last years being constantly haunted, shouldn’t he?

He still reluctantly had to admit that something must be going on. Doors didn’t slam under their own power if there was no open window. Someone had been up there and had slammed the door. To what purpose, though? Was it a scare tactic? If it was, it meant that the culprit had to know about Ciel’s involvement in the investigation, and there weren’t many people who were supposed to know; the only ones Ciel could think of were the police, and the servants at Lord Clarey’s house. 

At the breakfast table, the atmosphere was quiet and contemplative. It didn’t look like Elizabeth had slept any better than Ciel had, and Sieglinde remained focused mostly on her food. She was demolishing a pheasant pie pretty thoroughly when someone knocked on the door. Ciel folded the newspaper he’d been reading with a flip of the wrist.

“It must be Inspector Carmichael,” he said, nagged by a dark premonition.

Indeed, it was, and the poor inspector seemed more discombobulated than ever. Ciel had signalled Sebastian to let the man into the dining room where they were finishing their breakfast, and Inspector Carmichael dropped into a chair as if the strings keeping him up had just been cut. 

“Inspector Carmichael,” Ciel said in greeting. “Would you like a cup of tea? This is excellent Darjeeling tea.”

“Oh, please. Yes, please. This has been a rough morning.”

“Someone else is dead, I presume,” Ciel said.

“How do you know?” Inspector Carmichael asked with wide eyes. “Oh, thank you,” he said to Sebastian handing him a cup of tea.

“Let’s call it an intuition,” Ciel said sarcastically, but the inspector didn’t seem to notice his tone. “I’m not really surprised. This has never seemed to me like an isolated crime.” He was struck by a thought. “Is the victim Lord Arthur King?”

Inspector Carmichael blinked, caught in the process of taking a sip of his tea. “We haven’t identified the victim yet. He has been found in a back alley, but the clothes look like they could belong to a lord. Is this Lord King an acquaintance of yours?”

“He is. I could try to identify the body, if you want. And to kill two birds with one stone we could examine it as we examined Lord Clarey before.”

“Of course, this is actually why I came here. But—” He looked forlornly at his tea.

“You may finish your tea first,” Ciel said generously, even though he was in a hurry to get a look at the body.

A new body meant a wealth of new clues. They hadn’t been able to find anything that might orientate their suspicions toward one of Lord Clarey’s servants. Strychnine had been bought by the staff to kill rats, but between the amount that had been bought and what had been found in the house, there wasn’t a big enough difference to be responsible for Lord Clarey’s death. Strychnine didn’t linger much in the body, so it was unlikely the poisoning would have been planned to build up over time. As ludicrous as it sounded, Mr Clarkson may have been right in saying that the death had been caused by an intruder, but this hypothetic intruder would still have needed to know Lord Clarey’s habits. For now, the investigation was on stasis, but this new death meant that things were moving along. 

“You look cheerful,” Sieglinde commented as they were getting ready to go out.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ciel replied loftily. 

The new victim had been found early in the morning, and the clerks at the mortuary hadn’t had time to undress him yet. As Inspector Carmichael had pointed out, the cut of the clothes and the quality of the fabric spoke of a wealthy man. Contrary to what Ciel had assumed, though, the dead man wasn’t Lord King, even if he had similar measurements and his hair was the same shade of brown. He might have passed for Lord King at a distance, but the victim was younger and his face more handsome. The curious part, though, was that the dead man wore no coat, no hat or scarf that might indicate he had been dressed for the outdoors; and, the strangest of all, he also had no shoes on. 

“Did you find any other item of clothing next to the body?” he asked the inspector.

“No, no. We don’t know where his shoes are, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“It’s not just the shoes,” Ciel said. “This man hasn’t been attacked as he walked into the alley. He’s been killed indoors, and then the murderer moved the body. But he wouldn’t have been barefoot, even in his own home… Hmm.”

The face wasn’t grimacing like Lord Clarey’s and it didn’t look like rigor mortis has set in yet, but Ciel couldn’t see any obvious tear or blood stain anywhere on the body. 

“What made you think that this death has anything to do with Lord Clarey’s?” he asked.

“Oh, er, well.” Inspector Carmichael pulled at his moustache. “When we found him, his eyes and mouth were open wide, as though he’d been screaming when he died.”

“Died of fright, huh?”

Tapping his finger over the handle of his cane, Ciel looked over the body one more time. Behind him he heard silk rustle, probably Sieglinde who was getting fidgety as she waited with Elizabeth for Ciel to let her examine the body. He could already tell that this man hadn’t been poisoned with strychnine like the previous victim, although she’d had to confirm it. Sebastian was standing a little closer to the door, straight and still like a being carved out of a block of marble. 

“Sebastian,” Ciel called, flicking his finger at the butler. “Come here. Look at the body. Is he the young man you saw?”

Sebastian took a moment to study the victim’s face. “Indeed, he is, my lord.”

“Thank you. It’s—” A picture was starting to take form in his mind. “I think I might know what happened. Inspector, I can’t tell you the name of this man for now, but at least I can tell you his job: he was a Mary-ann.”

Ciel’s casual tossing out of the term almost sent the inspector into a fit. 

“My lord, what—” he spluttered, red in the face, his moustache quivering furiously. “My lord, please, there are ladies present—”

“What’s a Mary-ann?” Elizabeth asked.

“He means the man was a prostitute,” Sieglinde told her.

“But, how—” Elizabeth’s guileless green eyes blinked, then widened in understanding. “Oh,” she said, her hand flying to her open mouth. 

The whole exchange had robbed the inspector of his words and he gawked at the girls as if they were wood sprites whose strange customs he didn’t understand. Sieglinde smirked, looking smug at her accomplishment and then she directed at Ciel a look that made him turn his face away, feeling a blush rise to his cheeks. He hadn’t foreseen Elizabeth’s innocent question and Sieglinde’s not-so-innocent answer, caught as he was in his reasoning, and now he felt flustered and didn’t appreciate it in the least. 

“Anyway,” he bit out. “Sebastian has seen this man visit Lord King for the past few days, but Lord King’s—unsavoury habits didn’t seem like they had anything to do with the murder case.” He felt Sieglinde’s eyes on him like the heat of a flame, but he refused to look in her direction. “Now, though, this death paints a different picture. I’m theorising that the clothes are Lord King’s, and that—”

Ciel saw that Inspector Carmichael, wholly absorbed in the task of not looking at anyone in the room—even the dead man—wasn’t really paying attention to what Ciel was saying.

“Inspector, are you listening?” Ciel snapped his finger under the inspector’s nose. “Oi!”

Inspector Carmichael startled. “My lord, I really think we should have this conversation somewhere else, and hmm, privately.”

“Don’t be daft,” Ciel said sharply. “I don’t think that Lord King was actually sleeping with the man, and even if he was this is not what we should be concerned about.” He was rather proud of himself for saying that sentence without blubbering like that idiot inspector; Sieglinde would never have let him live it down. “I think Lord King was harassed by a third party, and purposed to make our victim his doppelgänger to protect himself. When the man died, he tried to hide his involvement by moving the body, and he was probably in the process of taking back his clothes when he was interrupted, which is why only the shoes are missing.”

“That sounds—Does that mean we have to arrest Lord King?” Inspector Carmichael asked, looking uncomfortable at the notion.

“At least we should interrogate him. He definitely knows more than he lets on. Let’s go now, shall we? Sieglinde, you should examine the body. I don’t think he died like the other one.”

“I don’t think so either,” she said.

“Elizabeth,” Ciel said. “What would you rather do? Do you want to go back to the house, or—”

“I will stay with Sieglinde,” she said. “We can make our own way back home.”

“All right,” he said. “I don’t know when I’ll be back, but—”

“It’s fine.” She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. The brush of her lips on his skin made his heart skip a beat. “Have fun,” she murmured. 

She smelled like jasmine, he noted in a daze. He mumbled his goodbyes and strode away, not wanting anyone to see a fresh blush turn his face crimson. Sebastian caught up with him easily, but Inspector Carmichael was left trailing behind, too slow in his reaction to Ciel’s abrupt departure.

“What do you want me to do, my lord?” Sebastian asked so as to not be overheard by the inspector. “Do you need me at Lord King’s house?”

“Inspector Carmichael and I can take care of talking to the man and his staff. I want you to keep watching Lord Blackwood and Mr Hyde. Try to find out whether they’re being haunted too—it might tell us which one will be the next victim. Oh, and I want to know if any of them has been in contact with Madame Edna, the medium.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Sebastian flitted away like a dark bird taking off. Once in the street, Ciel took a deep breath, trying to purge his lungs from the scent of death from the mortuary. The city smelled distinctively better than London’s foul air, even though Ciel could perceive a faint whiff of horse manure. The sunrays were splintered by the clouds in the mackerel sky, and a gust of wind made Ciel tighten the collar of his coat around his neck.

“Don’t you think Lord King will have left town? He should have done so already, if he’s being harassed.”

The inspector had appeared on Ciel’s blind side, but Ciel had too much self-control to let it startle him. 

“This isn’t the kind of harassment he thinks he can just shake off. And I don’t think we scare him much compared to that threat.”

“What do you mean?”

Ciel smiled. “I think it’d be better to let Lord King tell us in his own words.”

Lord King was renting a townhouse, and most of the staff wasn’t of his hire, except for his footman. Ciel mentally checked this fact as a point in their favour, since it meant there were more chances that the servants would be honest with them if they weren’t hindered by pesky loyalty. Ciel had anticipated that Lord King would be surprised, and possibly wary at seeing him in the company of the police, but when a servant led them to the sitting room where Lord King had wished to receive them, Lord King’s actual reaction was somewhat peculiar.

His eyes flicked to them, and then down. “Ah, you’re here,” he said, sounding despondent. “I should have known.”

The man was in a pathetic state of advanced self-pity. His necktie was loose, his collar was open, and he had the face of a man who had been battling with insomnia and was ashamed of losing. He had a glass of some amber-coloured liquor in his hand, but it didn’t look like he’d even touched it.

Inspector Carmichael and Ciel looked at each other, for once both on the same wavelength of being disconcerted by that unconventional welcome. Inspector Carmichael looked at Ciel questioningly, surrendering him the lead, and Ciel nodded at him to go ahead.

“Lord King,” the inspector said, “if you will forgive us this intrusion, we have come to see you concerning a, hmm, delicate matter.”

He made a pointed pause, then, and Lord King, who seemed like he’d been half-listening at best, looked up and said, “Oh, forgive me my rudeness. Please, have a seat. You too, my lord.”

Inspector Carmichael and Ciel each took one of a pair of mahogany tub chairs. The inspector’s chair creaked under his weight, making the man still as if he were afraid that it would collapse.

“We’ve found a dead man in a back alley only a few streets from here,” Inspector Carmichael said. “We have reasons to think that the victim’s clothes were not his, but yours.”

He was speaking with notably more confidence than Ciel had seen him bear so far, which made Ciel wonder what sort of things the inspector had heard from London about him to be so intimidated. Lord King, on the other hand, looked the picture of resignation, like a condemned man who could already feel the hangman’s noose around his neck.

“You’re right, they’re my clothes,” he said listlessly. “It’s useless to deny it, as any of the servants here will be able to confirm it. I made him don them.”

“You wanted him to pass for you,” Inspector Carmichael said, not making it a question. “This young man had a, hmm, a rather peculiar profession. How did you come into contact with him?”

This, finally, made a breach into Lord King’s apathy. The man startled at the question and blushed furiously, his hands curling protectively around his glass. 

“Oh, er, well, I just found him through a, an acquaintance,” he said, shiftily avoiding their eyes. “I don’t know what his job was, just that he needed money, and—”

So, he _had_ taken advantage of the man’s services, Ciel thought, which made the fact that he’d then used him as decoy even more despicable. The young prostitute had probably thought that wearing a rich man’s clothes and staying at a rich man’s house, and being paid for it, was a grand way to pass a few evenings. It also looked that Lord King was a pitiful liar, which was always a quality in a suspect.

“Why did you need such protection?” Inspector Carmichael said. “Who’s after you, Lord King?”

“Who—” Lord King looked at Ciel and then back at the inspector, his forehead wrinkly with confusion. “I—don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Inspector Carmichael repeated, his voice reflecting the same incredulity that Ciel felt. “What made you think you were in any danger?”

“My friend, Lord Clarey—”

“But what made you think that whoever killed your friend was after you too?” Inspector Carmichael asked more cuttingly. “Do you have any information about Lord Clarey’s murder?”

Something had shuttered behind Lord King’s eyes. He had started this conversation resigned to his fate and ready to tell them anything they wanted to know, but at some point, something had changed the game for him and it looked like he was retreating into himself, pulling his secrets along with him. Feeling that they were about to lose him, Ciel decided to go on the offensive. 

“Who is the ghost, Lord King?” he asked.

He watched as a whole range of emotions flitted across the man’s face: a brief moment of shock, maybe just from how direct the question was, then confusion, fear, narrow-eyed suspicion, confusion again, until, finally, his face set into a blank mask. It had gone so fast and yet every emotion was so vivid that Ciel felt like he’d just had a peek at the chapter titles of a book he couldn’t read. 

“I don’t know,” Lord King said shortly.

“But you’re not denying that you’ve been haunted, just like you friend Lord Clarey?”

“Yes, I saw a glowing face—”

“What did that glowing face look like?”

Lord King looked at Ciel for a moment, as if trying to detect a hidden meaning behind the question.

“I can’t remember,” he said slowly. “I was rather shocked by the sight, you see.”

He was obviously lying, but he also didn’t seem in the mood to tell them the truth anymore. Ciel leaned against the back of his chair, crossing his arms with a hint of petulance. Where had they gone wrong? Ciel thought the inspector had handled the questioning well enough, and yet something had made Lord King clam up. Was it Ciel’s presence? Did he share Blackwood’s ludicrous belief that Ciel knew something about Lord Clarey’s murder and this supposed ghost? It wouldn’t be so annoying if Ciel could actually remember anything useful from that time, but when he tried he couldn’t manage more than a vague impression of older snobby boys laughing at some private joke or other. He’d been unwell for most of his time in Bath, his schedule busy with a thorough water treatment, and the bigger boys looked much too intimidating for him to be very interested in them. 

Inspector Carmichael sent a few rapid glances at Ciel before he said, “Well, thank you for your cooperation, my lord. You’ll understand if I ask you not to leave the city and remain available in case further questioning is needed.”

“Am I under arrest?” Lord King asked mournfully.

“N-no,” Inspector Carmichael said after another glance in Ciel’s direction. “Have a good day, my lord.”

They left Lord King to what looked like an attack of renewed melancholy. The last image Ciel had before the door closed was of the man looking down his glass like the alcohol held the solution to whatever darkness had clamped itself to him.

“What do you think, my lord?” Inspector Carmichael asked Ciel, his voice barely carrying over the ruckus of the street’s traffic.

“What do _you_ think?” Ciel asked, giving him an appreciating look.

“His behaviour was strange. I don’t believe he has no idea of his tormentor’s identity.”

“He most certainly has an idea and he was obviously lying, and rather badly at that. I think—” Ciel rubbed his chin in thought. “I think that he thought we knew something, that we knew _everything_. But then it appeared that we didn’t, and he went back to trying to protect his secret.”

“Which is?”

“If we knew that, inspector, then we would have this case all figured out, don’t you think?” Ciel replied snappishly. “But no innocent man is so secretive, especially when his own life is at stake.”

He had a few ideas, though: it would have happened ten years ago, when Clarey, King, Blackwood, and Hyde were all teenagers, and it must have involved a death, or Clarey and King wouldn’t be so spooked by the suggestion of a ghost. Accident, or murder? It would probably be informative to have a look at what the local newspapers of the time had to say about this.


	7. Chapter 7

Back at the house, he met again with Elizabeth and Sieglinde, who shared with him the results of Sieglinde’s examination of the young man’s body. Sieglinde confirmed that the victim hadn’t been poisoned by strychnine or by any other poison she could think of, nor had he been injured in any way.

“Of course, I can’t be certain of anything without opening the body,” Sieglinde conceded. “But to me it looks like his heart simply gave out.”

“You mean that—he might actually have died of fright?” Elizabeth asked. 

“I guess it’s possible,” Sieglinde said. “Especially if he already had a weak heart.”

“And then he saw… what, a ghost?”

“Or someone pretending to be a ghost,” Ciel said, annoyed that she would bring this up again; earlier he had come across Wolfram muttering to himself about losing the broom and being tired of this haunted house, and he wanted everyone to stop giving weight to that nonsense. “The question is whether the murderer think they’ve actually killed Lord King, or if they know they’ve missed their mark, in which case they’ll try again.”

Sebastian was charged with watching over King, Clarey, and Blackwood as he’d done for the past few days, and Ciel decided on a trip to the library. Elizabeth and Sieglinde insisted on accompanying him instead of going to the baths as they’d originally planned, and Ciel made a show of complaining that their presence would be distracting. In reality, he was secretly glad for the company and also for the two added pairs of eyes, because poring over musty newspapers for hours was going to be a harrowing task.

They found the closest library to their lodgings on Brock Street, and set up camp in one of the reading rooms for the rest of the afternoon. Gay sunlight flowed from the wide arched window at the back of the room, spilling over the wooden tables, and the carved columns and balconies circumscribing the rows of bookshelves. A thin, pale librarian named Mr Rattle, who moved with the care of one who handled nitro-glycerine, provided them with the newspapers they asked for.

“I was there in 1883,” Ciel said to Elizabeth and Sieglinde. “I don’t remember the dates, but I’m positive it was spring, so we should search the papers all through March to June just to be safe. Take note of any deaths, accidental or not, and violent crimes that didn’t result in death. Of course, if the names of Clarey, Blackwood, Hyde, and King were mentioned it would be fantastic, but I’m not counting on that too much. They’re all from noble families, for a start, but also Lord Clarey’s father was Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, and Lord Blackwood’s father is part of the Board of Admiralty.”

“So, you think we might not find anything useful in these newspapers?” Sieglinde said with a pout, waving at the pile from March 1883 that already cluttered their table. 

“We may have to read between the lines,” Ciel said. “Let’s get to work. Forestalling won’t make this any less tedious.”

There were four newspapers of note in the city, all published weekly: _The Bath Journal_ , _The Bath and Cheltenham Gazette_ , _The Bath Chronicle_ , and _The Bath Herald_. Four months’ worth of those newspapers amounted to a manageable amount of about eighty papers to read through, and between the three of them they had enough of the afternoon to do it. The hard part was to select what news were relevant to their case. As Ciel had thought, there were never any mentions of the four men, no convenient ‘four murder suspects’ announcements. Bath wasn’t a place with a high criminality rate, so the number of deaths during those spring months of 1883 could be counted on the finger of one hand: one mugging gone wrong not far from the Assembly Rooms, a couple of marital disputes that had resulted in the death of one of the spouses, and a drunk man who had lost his footing and fallen to his death in one of the surrounding hills. Other than that, there had been some late-night agitation, one robbery, and a series of assaults a little outside of the city. Nothing stood out to Ciel, but he took thorough notes of everything he and the girls found, hoping it might be helpful later. 

The mood at dinner this evening was one of exhaustion and discouragement, and Ciel would probably have retired early just to mull over the case in the privacy of his bedroom, if Elizabeth hadn’t decided that they should reward themselves with an evening of quiet leisure.

“I know the vacation part of this trip has been pushed to the side,” she said, “but we should enjoy ourselves once in a while.”

“We’ve gone to the ball,” Ciel pointed out, even if he’d had his own motivation for it. 

“Well, tonight we can do more of the things that _you_ enjoy. I don’t mean that we have to go out. But I want to think of something else than this murder case for a little while. Let’s make it a rule! We’ll say no more of it for the whole evening.”

“I concur,” Sieglinde said. 

Ciel opened his hands in surrender. “Well, if you’ve both decided to join forces against me, what can I do?”

“Aw, poor Ciel,” Sieglinde said mockingly, and Ciel resisted the childish impulse to stick his tongue out. 

They played cards and then chess. Ciel let the girls team up against him, but still won the majority of the games—Elizabeth was a player of average strength, while Sieglinde might be a scientist of astounding talent but she lacked a mind for strategy, and they didn’t manage to read each other’s strategies well enough for their association to be helpful. They read each other poems—Sieglinde was the most dramatic reader ever—and recounted novels they had read. They didn’t mention the murder case, and didn’t talk about ghosts, although they were all oversensitive to every sudden noise in the house. No new door slamming business had occurred since the previous night, but the wariness had yet to fade in the house’s occupants. Ciel had given Sebastian new instructions to also watch King, Hyde, and Blackwood at night, for their own protection, and he was beginning to rethink that order now that nightfall had come to pass. 

_Scared of the ghost, are we?_

He scoffed at his own ridiculousness. It was late and he was tired, preoccupied, and his thoughts were running ahead of him, that was all. If he were at some point in real danger, Sebastian would feel it and come back right away, and Wolfram was a pretty formidable line of defence by himself—even if Ciel would put no bet on the man’s willingness to defend him, he would lay his life for Sieglinde and probably protect Elizabeth too, not that she was likely to need it. They were as safe as they could be here. Emerging from his thoughts, Ciel caught Elizabeth stifling a yawn behind her hand.

“We should go to bed,” he said.

“Oh, I’m not that tired,” Elizabeth protested. “We can still—” 

“Well, I am.”

“This is so peaceful, just the three of us spending time together,” she said. “It feels like a shame to end it now.”

Ciel was taken aback by the sad look on her face, as if she were resigning herself to losing something precious. Where did that come from? They’d been spending time together since the beginning of their stay in Bath, hadn’t they?

Before he managed to find a suitable reply Sieglinde had leaned in and rested her hand over Elizabeth’s. “We’ll have other moments like those, Lizzie,” she said. “Let’s go to bed.”

Elizabeth smiled at her friend. “I know, I’m being silly. It’s just that there are moments that feel like we should hold onto them, preserve them somehow. But you’re right, we’re all tired and I’m not making any sense.”

Despite their words, the two girls didn’t move from each other for another moment, both lost in a silent contemplation of the other. Ciel shifted in his seat, feeling oddly out of place. If he got up and headed for his room, would they even notice him? He cleared his throat, more in a self-conscious way than in a pointed one, but it broke the spell and the girls tore themselves from one another. They bade each other good night, and all retired to their respective rooms. 

Ciel expected once again to toss and turn in bed for a long time before he could find sleep, but the evening had apparently relaxed him enough, or he was tired enough, that he was unconscious barely any time after his head hit the pillow. In his dream, his mind was stuck in the past, on a lazy summer afternoon after a picnic in a meadow. He was sitting in the grass and weaving flowers together to make a crown. The air smelled sweet and warm sunlight caressed his skin. He could see his parents, discussing together a little further away with Sebastian the dog sniffing around, his tail flapping madly; Mother had a hand on her hat to keep it from flying away, and Father was laughing at a joke she’d made. He knew without looking that his brother was beside him, engrossed in the same task; never one to sit quietly, he was humming “The Muffin Man” as he worked. In the way of dreams, the thought of his twin caused none of the pain it did when he was awake. It was just an ordinary afternoon of being surrounded and loved, with no notion that it might end one day, and only the faint, needling thought that this wasn’t real lurking at the back of his mind.

_Brother._

A small voice was calling for him, but he didn’t want to look, didn’t want to have to break that bright illusion of peace and happiness. He was too afraid of what he might see if he looked. 

_Brother, help me. Please, help me. Help!_

He sat, frozen, unease churning in his stomach. The warmth from the sun was fading and a cold wind had risen, chilling him to the bone. It didn’t smell like flowers anymore, but like the cold, mouldy odour of the underground. _Help! Please, help!_ The cries had got shrill, and he tried to block them by covering his ears with his hands, whimpering in distress. _Please, don’t! No!_ He could do nothing to help, had never been able to do anything, no matter how many times he relived it. 

_Help!_

Ciel woke up gasping, the cry echoing in his ears. He sat up in bed, shaken, trying to make out his surroundings. He’d been dreaming—he was used to unsettling dreams, but he could have sworn that the voice hadn’t been in his mind, but had resounded in this very room. 

He listened intently, but the only thing he could hear was the sound of his own heartbeat.

\---

Lizzie and Ciel had both looked so obviously weary that Sieglinde had thought better for everyone to retire for the night, but once in her own bed she found that she didn’t feel tired enough for sleep. Lighting a candle so as not to disturb the other occupants of the floor with electrical lighting, she had started reading in bed from a volume in German she’d found in the library, _Das Gespensterbuch_. It was, ironically, a ghost story anthology, and the one Sieglinde was reading was of a marksman who had made a deal with the devil and obtained in the bargain a number of bullets that never missed. Wolfram had often told her another variation of the _Freischütz_ folk tale when she was a child, but tonight it seemed more sinister to her than it ever had before. 

Outside the sounds of the wind blowing had turned hollow, and at some point she even thought she heard the murmur of a voice. _You’re only spooking yourself with those stories. You don’t need more ghosts in your life right now._

She closed the book and put it on the nightstand, and was about to blow the candle when she heard a distinct cry, then a series of muffle knocks. It had sounded like it came from Ciel’s room, and Sieglinde only hesitated a moment before slipping out of bed, grabbing the crutch that she generally left by her bed, and limping out of her room and into the darkened hallway.

There was no light filtering from under the door to Ciel’s bedroom, but as she made her way to it Sieglinde heard a few more sounds that made it clear that someone was moving about the room. Sieglinde lingered outside of the door, wondering if she should call Wolfram for help in case the person making those noises wasn’t Ciel, but an intruder, until she heard a soft sound of distress that was definitely Ciel’s. 

She found him standing in the middle of the room in his nightgown, barefoot, looking a little frantic. He wasn’t wearing his eye-patch, and with the moonlight flooding the room it was obvious how one of his eyes wasn’t like the other. Sieglinde could remember how it looked up close, the distinctive pattern that mad men had carved on the cornea through means she didn’t wish to think about. She wondered whether or not he could still see from that eye, and felt a surge of searing anger at the people who had dared hurt him. 

At her entrance he’d whirled around, startled. “Sullivan,” he said and his hand flew to protect his right eye.

“You don’t have to hide it,” she said. “I’ve seen it before, remember? It’s all right, Sebastian told me everything.”

“Everything?” Ciel repeated, frowning, as he slowly lowered his hand.

“He said that you were a prisoner from a demon-worshipping cult, and they did this—” She shook her head, making hair fly into her eyes. “Never mind that, you probably don’t want to talk about it. It’s none of my business. What happened right now? I heard—noises.”

“What did you hear?” he asked urgently. 

“Ah, uh.” It looked like he was expecting a specific answer, but the devil if Sieglinde knew what it was. “I heard you cry out, then a series of bumping noises coming from your room. Did you—did you have a nightmare?”

“Ah.”

He stepped back until he could sit on the edge of his bed and then stared into nothing for a moment. Worried, Sieglinde made her lopsided way toward him. When she sat by his side, resting her crutch next to her against the bed, he didn’t move or show in any way that he was aware of her presence. 

“Ciel?” she called softly. “Can you tell me what’s wrong?”

His stillness and silence scared her, and she started to slowly reach out to him. But before she could make contact, he’d turned his head toward her, acknowledging her, and she let her hand drop between them on the mattress. 

“I thought I’d heard something,” he said in a neutral tone of voice that would have been convincing if Sieglinde hadn’t known him better than that. “But I probably dreamt it.”

“What did you think you’d heard?”

“It was nothing,” he said, looking away. “It was a dream.”

It didn’t sound like nothing. “No, I’m asking because—” She hesitated a little. “I think I heard a voice, earlier. I’m not sure about it!” she added hastily when he whipped his head at her. “I thought it was the wind, and maybe it was.”

Ciel contemplated her in silence for a moment, then seemed to deflate. “You’re right, it was probably the wind,” he said, rubbing his face tiredly. “Sorry if I woke you up, Sullivan. You can go back to bed. I’m fine.”

“I wasn’t asleep,” she said.

She saw him glance at her and then down, and turn away hastily. She didn’t understand why until she realised that the top button of her nightdress was undone. Instead of doing it again, she smirked and leaned forward, propping herself on the hand she’d kept between them.

“Am I offending your modesty, Lord Phantomhive?” she asked teasingly. 

“Stop playing games, Sullivan!” he snapped, leaning backward to escape her. “I—just dress yourself properly, will you.”

“It’s only one little button.”

“But I can see—”

Ooh, did he mean that he could see down her shirt? He was still holding himself rather awkwardly, but not standing up or pushing her away. He seemed to be making an effort not to look down again. It was nice to be able to see his face unencumbered by the eye-patch; it made him look less severe, more vulnerable. How would he react if she brushed the hair out of his right eye, or, more daringly, if she held his face between her hands and kissed him on the mouth? She wondered if he and Lizzie had shared a kiss already.

“Have you and Lizzie ever kissed?” she asked before she could help herself. 

She could envision them doing it, clear as day, and it made her heart beat faster, blood flowing instantly to her cheeks. She wanted to see it and she wanted to be part of that picture, which was an absurd thought, nothing but a mad fantasy. 

“N-no,” he said, sounding defensive. “But what concern of yours is it whether we have or not?”

She wanted to say, “Do you want to practice on me?” Or maybe, “What if we called Lizzie right now and asked her for a kiss?” Or, rather, “I love you, and I love Lizzie, and I can’t do anything about it without ruining it for both of you.” But she managed to contain herself and she sat straight again, giving him back his personal space. 

“You should try to kiss her,” she said. “I’m sure Lizzie would enjoy it, but women can’t ask for those things.”

“You—what? What are you saying?” he said, scowling. “I’m sorry that I bothered you, but I would very much like to go back to bed, and you should do the same.”

“You didn’t bother me,” she said, grabbing her crutch and rising to her feet. He didn’t offer to help her, and she wouldn’t have wanted him to.

When she was almost at the door, she heard him call, “Sullivan?”

She looked back; he was lying in bed, his back turned to her. “Yes?” 

“Thanks.”

He didn’t say what he was thanking her for, in true Ciel Phantomhive fashion, and she didn’t ask for clarification. She merely pulled the memory of that rare word of thanks close to her heart, keeping it there for a rainy day.

Back in the hallway, she stopped to listen for another of those murmurs. It had started raining, and the only things she could hear were the patter of raindrops against glass panes, and the house’s frame creaking under gusts of wind. It almost felt like she was standing inside a huge beast that was yawning and cracking its joints upon waking up. The house felt vibrant and alive, almost scarily so, but she couldn’t hear anything like a human voice. 

After a while, she went back to her room and fell asleep with no further disturbance. 

\---

Sebastian was back the next morning to make them breakfast, for which Sieglinde was privately grateful because in his absence _Wolfram_ was in charge of the cooking, and she loved Wolfram very dearly but it wasn’t for his cooking skills. When she came down for breakfast, she took a moment to appreciate the table crowded with waffles, crumpets, dishes of eggs, bacon, and ham, bread still warm from the oven, pots of jam, marmalade, or pear butter, and bowls of fresh fruits. 

“Does it look to your liking, my lady?” Sebastian asked, watching her reaction with the satisfaction of an artist who knew his art was appreciated.

“It looks delicious!” Sieglinde exclaimed.

She was quickly joined by Lizzie, but Ciel took longer to come down and when he did, he didn’t look like he had found sleep easily after Sieglinde had left him. With his eye-patch on again he looked remote and impenetrable, having retreated far back behind his walls.

“You look tired,” Lizzie remarked as she tore a piece of bread with her fingers. “Did you have trouble sleeping?”

“I’m fine,” Ciel said and then tossed a warning glance Sieglinde’s way.

She lifted an eyebrow in response; she didn’t need him glaring at her to know that he didn’t wish for his night troubles to become breakfast conversation material. She took a bite off a warm crumpet, savouring its buttery flavour. 

“I think I’ll attend one of those séances,” Ciel said. He was drinking tea, but hadn’t touched any of the food.

“You—really?” Lizzie said.

“You think the medium is related to the case, then,” Sieglinde said.

“It might be that the so-called spirit photograph was just a coincidence that Lord King overreacted to,” Ciel said, though he didn’t sound convinced. “But I would like to see it for myself, and to meet this ‘Madame Edna’ face-to-face. Will you come with me?”

Sieglinde and Lizzie both acquiesced, although Sieglinde thought Lizzie looked a little uneasy at the idea. According to Flora, Madame Edna did a séance every night at Lady Pickering’s except on Sundays, and then a few more private séances for the people who asked for them. They decided that they would go tonight.

Inspector Carmichael visited them later in the morning to tell them that they’d found the identity of the young man Lord King had used as his decoy. His name had been Elliott Smith, and he’d roomed on Kingston Road with two other young men, who had probably shared the same profession and had released his personal effects to the police: a pair of scruffy shoes, trousers, two shirts, a pocket watch whose glass was cracked, and a small bottle of medicine.

“It’s very likely that he had more things and his roommates nicked what they could use or resell,” said the inspector, “but I thought the medicine could be of particular interest to you.” And then, to Sieglinde’s surprise, he handed the bottle to her.

It was a bottle of digitalis tincture, and it was empty—which probably explained why the roommates had left it to the police. 

“Heart medicine,” she said. “What did your surgeon say about the cause of death?”

“That he died of a heart attack, as you thought,” Inspector Carmichael said. “His death can therefore be deemed accidental. He was weak of heart, and he got scared enough that he died from it.”

“He got scared by someone who would have killed him anyway,” Ciel interjected. “Or killed Lord King, at least. Maybe the murderer realised that he had the wrong victim, but Elliot Smith was already dying. In that case, he will try again to attack Lord King.”

“Will he, though?” Inspector Carmichael asked. “Wouldn’t it be smarter for the murderer to leave Lord King alone after such a spectacular mistake?”

“It would certainly be smarter,” Ciel said. He looked out the window, fiddling with the ring on his thumb. “But if I’m getting this right, it’s all about revenge. Someone looking for revenge will not back down so easily. Although I guess they may lay low for a little while.”

Inspector Carmichael and Ciel promised to keep each other updated on their respective progress, and the inspector left. In the afternoon, they were invited for tea at the Collinses’. Ciel hadn’t seen the twins since his disastrous encounter at the Pump Room, and Sieglinde could tell that the memory made him uneasy and that he would have declined if not for Lizzie’s wish that they would interspace working on the case with more ordinary activities. 

It was a beautiful day, the sky of a blue that looked washed clean from the night’s rain, the smell of wet stone lingering in the air. Lizzie chatted all the way and after a while Ciel relaxed, looking like he was almost enjoying the walk and the fine weather. Sieglinde thought of last night, of sitting on his bed with him and wanting to kiss him so much that she could almost picture it happening; watching the two fiancés together, looking peaceful and happy—or at least as peaceful and happy as Ciel ever looked—she congratulated herself on her restraint. It was a cold comfort, but it was one she held onto. 

“Did you hear—?” Lizzie said, and it was the only warning they got before men swarmed them from seemingly nowhere.

Ciel, Lizzie, and Sieglinde had entered a narrow alley that should have been a shortcut to the Collinses’ house, and they were away from the main traffic, with no one around to witness this attack. The men wore dark woollen coats and thick-soled shoes, and they had the ruddy, chafed faces of people used to a hard life. One of them, taller than the rest and with coarse red hair visible from under his cap, smirked at them and said, “Look what we found here, boys!” The rest of the group laughed, and the red-haired man continued, “Let’s have a bit of fun, that’ll teach them to be careful where they’re going.”

He stepped forward, but stopped when he saw that Ciel had a gun and that he was pointed it at the group.

“Do not move,” Ciel said coldly.

“Didn’t your mama tell you that you shouldn’t play with toys?” the man said nastily. “Get him, boys!”

More men jumped them from behind, trying to wrench Ciel’s gun out of his grip. Sieglinde was jostled in the process, tumbled to the ground on hard cobblestones, and didn’t manage to get back up. Something or someone hit the back of her head and she fell on all four, gasping in surprise and pain. There was a flurry of movement all around her, thuds and cries, and Sieglinde couldn’t figure out what was going on. Ciel had been standing right next to her; where was he now? And where was Lizzie? She felt a hand on her shoulder and she squealed, clawing at the hand in panic to make it let go. Another hand was smacked against her mouth—it was a gloved hand, and singularly smaller than what she’d expected.

“Sullivan, it’s me!” Ciel whispered furiously. “Let’s get a little further away.”

He dragged her to the side, away from the fray, until they were both sitting with their backs against a stone wall. Ciel kept an arm around her shoulders and she tried not to lean too much into him. What was going on? Who was fighting whom, exactly? Sieglinde brushed her hair off her eyes and looked upon the scene: some rough-looking men were rushing about, fists flying, while others were crumpled to the ground, groaning. And at the centre of it was Lizzie, whirling like a ballet dancer. She was holding what Sieglinde realised was Ciel’s cane and using it like a sword, slashing and thrusting it into the men, moving so fast that none of them seemed to be able to get a hit on her. Their frustration made their movements furious and erratic, easy for Lizzie to counter.

“She’s handling it,” Ciel said, in his voice a hint of the awe Sieglinde herself felt.

Lizzie slipped between those men’s fingers like water, moving with an impossible grace that Sieglinde knew would be beyond her even if she were able to walk properly. She looked like an avenging angel with her golden hair flying, and her fair face hard and focused. _So beautiful,_ Sieglinde thought, her heart pounding steadily as she watched. Some of the men picked themselves up and tried to get to the end of the alley, back into the main street, but a tall, dark shadow had materialised there and blocked their exit. 

“Sebastian!” Ciel called a second before Sieglinde recognised the man. “You’re very late.”

Sebastian lazily looked over at where the fight was finally subsiding, holding one man in each hand by the scruff of their necks. 

“I’m sorry, my lord,” he said. “But it looks like Lady Elizabeth had it under control.”

Sebastian helped Lizzie prop the bruised and battered men against a wall, and with a length of rope he’d got from God knew where he tied their hands and feet. There were seven men in total, and the expression on their faces was one of identical bewilderment at this dismal turn of event. Ciel helped Sieglinde up on her feet, and together they joined Lizzie and Sebastian. Lizzie was breathing hard, cheeks still flushed from the action. Her hair was wild and her dress torn in places. She gave Ciel’s cane back to him with a wince—the paint had flaked and its length was dented.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I think it took some damage.”

“Better the cane than us,” Ciel replied offhandedly.

He reached out to her in a halted movement, then seemed to brace himself and slowly tucked a curl of blond hair behind her ear. Lizzie went very red, looking at him with wide eyes, but when she opened her mouth to say something, Ciel had turned away from her and toward the red-haired man who had acted as a sort of leader earlier. Sieglinde shuffled closer to Lizzie with a clink—it felt like something had got twisted in the metallic contraption on her left leg—and whispered to her.

“Are you all right?”

Lizzie still looked dazed and took a second to answer. “Oh, uh, yes, I’m fine, yes. What about you? You weren’t hurt, were you?”

The back of Sieglinde’s head still throbbed dully, but she smiled and said, “No, I wasn’t. Thanks to you, I’m unharmed.”

“We got paid for it, all right?” the red-haired man was yelling.

Sieglinde looked in his direction, and saw that in the minute it had taken for her and Lizzie to exchange those few words, Ciel had got his gun back and was pointing it at the man’s head.

“Who paid you?” Ciel asked, his demeanour icy.

“I don’t bloody know! Some rich noble-type.”

“What did he look like?”

“Tall, thin, smug look on his face. Didn’t give us no name, and we didn’t ask. We were just supposed to rough you up, give you a good scare. He didn’t tell us—” The man looked warily at Ciel’s gun and then his gaze flickered to Lizzie, quick and frightened.

“He didn’t warn you that my fiancée is a devil with a sword, or with anything that can pass for it,” Ciel said with a small, proud smile. “I suppose he must have ignored that fact. Sebastian, will you pass those men to Inspector Carmichael’s care? We are late for tea.”

“Of course, young master.”

Ciel made his gun disappear to wherever he usually kept it and then turned toward Sieglinde and Lizzie. Sieglinde noticed that he had taken a hit to his face and that his cheek was red and swollen. 

“We shouldn’t keep our friends waiting, should we?” he said. 

He offered them both of his arms, and they went their merry way as though they had come across no unusual obstacles.


	8. Chapter 8

“My God!” Flora exclaimed when she saw them come in, a hand over her mouth. “What on earth has happened to you three?”

“We ran into some trouble,” Ciel said evenly. “Some men made an ill-advised attempt at mugging us.”

“What—how—”

Flora shook her head, obviously unsure of what she should ask first, and rang for a maid to bring her a salve for Ciel’s bruised face. She dragged Sieglinde and Elizabeth to her rooms for a change of clothing. Elizabeth took off her damaged dress, that she had torn herself in some places to have an easier time moving, and spared it a mournful look—she had loved that dress and didn’t know if it could be mended—and exchanged it for a dress of light blue satin. Sieglinde only needed for her skirt to be brushed at the knees and she also fiddled with the metal on her legs, doing mysterious repairs. Flora’s maid helped Elizabeth do her hair again, and once they were ready they went back to the parlour where Ciel was waiting for them. 

“Now,” Flora said as they were served their tea, “you _have_ to tell me what happened to you.”

“As I said,” Ciel said in a tone that invited no further discussion. “We were victims of a failed robbery.”

“Oh,” Flora said, obviously disappointed by the lack of details. “Well, I’m glad that you don’t seem to have suffered much harm. Who knew the streets of Bath were so unsafe?”

“Who knew, indeed,” Ciel said, perfectly deadpan. 

He must have had an idea of who had hired those men to attack them. Elizabeth tried to figure it out for herself: according to that man, their employer had been of noble birth, tall and thin. Could he be Lord Blackwood? The man certainly seemed to be holding a grudge against Ciel, for some strange reason. Elizabeth discreetly rubbed her right arm, which was a little sore from the fight. She was sorely out of practice, and Mother would give her a good scolding if she could see her now. Despite this, Elizabeth felt in a better mood than she had for the last couple of days. She wasn’t happy that they’d been attacked in a dark alley, of course not; but neither Ciel nor Sieglinde had been seriously injured, and it had felt good to face an enemy that she could fight. Lord Blackwood could keep trying to scare them off, they were more than capable to weather it. It was better than this ghost nonsense. 

And then Ciel told Flora that they were going to Lady Pickering’s tonight, and Elizabeth was reminded that they were going to tangle with ghosts very soon, and that she didn’t fare as well with them as with robbers. 

“Oh, I _have_ to come with you!” Flora said. “I’ll try to talk Andrew into it, too. I’m hoping for more excitement than last time—not that it wasn’t a lot of fun, of course, but more drama would be entertaining.”

“Speaking of ghosts,” Ciel said. “Have you heard of more sightings from that ghostly man you told us about the other day?”

Flora thoughtfully tapped her fingers against her lips. “Now that you’re asking me about it, I don’t think I can remember any other stories about the Landsdown ghost.”

“Landsdown?” Sieglinde asked, putting back her cup of tea on its saucer with a delicate clinking sound. “Is that a name? I thought this was just some anonymous ghost.”

“Oh, no, I mean Landsdown as in ‘Landsdown Hill’, north-west of the city. Up there you get a magnificent view of the adjoining counties, it’s very pretty. It’s also down that hill that the ghost has always been sighted, therefore people have taken to calling it ‘The Landsdown Ghost’. Didn’t I tell you before?”

“No, you didn’t,” Ciel said. He was frowning, as though trying to recall some essential piece of information. “You never mentioned the place.”

“Oh, well, there you go. Landsdown derives its name from a monument erected upon the hill by George Lord Lansdown, in commemoration of some victory I can’t remember. You can go check it for yourself; it will be a nice walk, even if you don’t see any ghost.”

“We’ll be sure to do that.”

The rest of the conversation turned around other unrelated pieces of gossip that Flora felt she had to share. They were mostly about people Elizabeth didn’t know, and it was difficult to maintain even a show of interest. Ciel had fallen silent since Flora had named the place where the ghost had been sighted, apparently deep in thought. Sieglinde contributed more to the discussion that Elizabeth managed to do. She was the one who discovered that Flora had a knack for impersonations, and from then on, they had a merrier time watching her do it even of people who were strangers to them. Elizabeth even caught Ciel containing a smile at some point.

“Oh, dear,” Flora said in Lady Pickering’s exact tone of voice. “Look at the time, my darlings. I think we’ll have to part now if we want time to change clothing before the séance.”

The clock on the chimney indeed indicated that it was close to seven o’clock, and if they wanted to be ready for the séance that started at nine, they needed to hurry. 

“You’re right,” Elizabeth said, still chuckling. Sieglinde was wiping tears of laughter from her eyes. “We’ll see you later, then?”

“If I can manage to convince Andrew to spare two shillings,” Flora responded in her normal voice. “I have a feeling this evening will be very exciting!”

Flora’s words had a prophetic ring to them, and they stayed with Elizabeth for the next couple of hours, so that by the time they knocked on Lady Pickering’s door, she felt nervous and ready to jump out of her skin at the slightest suggestion of a ghost. Sebastian had come with them too, but he left them when they were escorted to the sitting room while he was taken away by Lady Pickering’s unfriendly butler, Freddy, to the servants’ quarters to wait for his master. 

Lady Pickering, in a bright yellow dress trimmed with black taffetas, welcomed them like long-lost friends of the dearest variety. 

“My darlings, how wonderful of you to come back! We are absolutely delighted to see you tonight. Every séance is a perfectly unique experience, so I’m sure you won’t regret attending again.” She gave Ciel an appreciative look. “And who might that lovely young man be?”

Ciel pinched his mouth, betraying that he was irritated at the greeting, but he got over it quickly and gave Lady Pickering the fake, but charming smile he used in such circumstances. “Earl Ciel Phantomhive,” he said with a bow. “At your service, my lady.”

“Lord Phantomhive, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I hope you’ll find this evening to your liking.”

“Oh, I have no doubt.”

Flora and Andrew Collins made their entrance merely a few minutes later. Mr Collins made a show of complaining about his sister pestering him until he agreed to come, but he observed the room with barely concealed curiosity. The set-up was much the same as last time, with the round table and its single candle at the centre of it, and Charlie the photographer fiddling with his equipment at the back. Elizabeth thought again about what Sieglinde had explained concerning the photography trick, and wondered how Charlie would react if they asked to look at his camera. But they hadn’t come here to upset the séance, so she said nothing and satisfied herself with just observing the man as he wetted the plate with care, and then inserted it into the camera. He whistled softly as he worked, and looked completely innocent of any wrongdoing. Maybe he didn’t see anything wrong with the tricks he used. 

Their group for the séance was completed by two new arrivals: one was of a young woman about the twins’ age, Lady Evangeline Wheeler, who was soft-spoken and mousy but had big, intelligent grey eyes. The other participant was, surprisingly, Mr Miller, the young locksmith who had expressed so much incredulity during their last séance.

“Ah, what can I say,” he said with a touch of embarrassment when he recognized them. “It’s awfully entertaining, isn’t it? And Madame Edna is—well, she’s something else.”

“Ooh,” Flora whispered to Elizabeth once the young man had turned his back. “Don’t you think our young man here has got smitten with Madame Edna?”

“Maybe,” Elizabeth said. “They’ve only met once, though.”

“Sometimes one meeting is all it takes,” Flora replied with confidence. 

Elizabeth realised that she didn’t know whether Flora was engaged or had a suitor. For all that they were the friendliest of companions, the twins rarely spoke of anything personal. _Well, it’s not like there’s not a lot they ignore about you._ Her thoughts were interrupted by Lady Pickering clapping her hands and addressing the company. 

“My dear friends,” she said. “I welcome all of you, the old and the new. We are about to commence, so if you would be so kind as to take a seat at the table. We have no seating arrangement prepared in advance, so sit wherever you please.”

Elizabeth took a seat between Sieglinde and Ciel. She’d seen her fiancé greet politely Mr Miller and the young Lady Wheeler, but now he had retreated into silent observation, his sharp eye intent on his surroundings and the other participants. 

“Where’s the medium?” he asked Elizabeth very softly, not looking at her.

“Last time she only came once we were all already sitting.”

When Madame Edna came in, wearing a sober dress of navy blue cotton, Elizabeth felt the atmosphere in the room shift in some imperceptible way. Everyone stopped talking at once and the air felt heavier, somehow, harder to breathe in, as if it were literally charged with tension and maybe a little bit of magic already. Madame Edna sat at the same seat she had last time, as far as Elizabeth could tell, and once again Mr Miller was sitting right next to her, although on her other side was Lady Wheeler rather than Lady Pickering. Madame Edna’s dark eyes swept over the participants, but she gave no indication that she recognized the ones who had attended before.

“Welcome, everyone,” she said in her deep, captivating voice. “This evening feels very auspicious for the spirits.”

She then proceeded to explain the significance of the candle and to light it, with no interference from Mr Miller this time. She asked them to hold hands, close their eyes, and think of the dead they might want to contact. Elizabeth felt Ciel’s fingers twitch in her grip at the suggestion. She wanted to ask him if he was all right, but this was an empty question that would get her an empty response, and he wouldn’t appreciate the display of concern in front of other people. 

Madame Edna started on an incanting monologue, “I call to the spirits shrouded in shadows and mystery. I call them into the warmth and the light of our world. I beg them to share with us their wisdom from beyond the veil.” The words were different from the previous séance but the rhythm was the same, akin to chanting, and Elizabeth was soon taken over by it until the words themselves blurred in their meanings. “Come, spirits, come!”

Elizabeth felt a draft of cold air and she froze, her heart pounding. Sieglinde had spoken of lights whirling over their heads last time, and Elizabeth was torn between wanting to see them too and being too afraid for it. Was Ciel trying to open his eyes? It seemed very much like something he would do.

“Spirit,” Madame Edna said, her voice clear in the suffocating silence. “Are you there?”

For a moment there was no sound, long enough that a shudder of unrest ran across the participants. Elizabeth’s heartbeat started to slow down, her body assuming that the danger had passed, and her fear was washed over by a wave of relief mixed with a hint of disappointment. 

“Well,” Mr Collins said, breaking the unnerving quiet in the room. “This certainly was—”

The end of his sentence, if he managed to get it out, was drowned in a loud crashing sound. Elizabeth heard a little feminine squeak, probably from Lady Wheeler, and she squeezed her eyes shut very hard, trying to imagine herself anywhere else. In the gardens at the Phantomhive mansion, Ciel standing amidst the rose bushes—There was another knock from under the table, and Elizabeth startled. Sieglinde immediately clutched her hand more tightly and that simple gesture filled Elizabeth’s heart with warm gratitude. 

“This spirit seems a bit nervous,” Madame Edna said in a shockingly conversational tone. “Spirit, you need not fear anything from us. You are among friends. I’ll ask you a few questions, and you will answer with one knock for yes, and two for no. Is that all right with you?”

Again, it took a few more seconds before they heard one knock in response. Was Madame Edna changing the pace of her séance for the sake of the returning participants—or could it be that there really was a ghost, and that it differed in its moods and behaviour from Mrs Darlington’s late husband?

“Are your intentions peaceful?” One more nerve-wracking moment before there was a knock. “Do you wish to communicate with us?” One knock. “Do you want to talk to one of the participants assembled here in particular?” One knock. “Can you tell us who it is?”

There was another booming noise, like something big and heavy had come crashing down upstairs.

“I can’t seem to channel this spirit,” Madame Edna said, “but it wants to communicate.” Then, loud and commanding, “Spirit, I will name the letters of the alphabet, and you will knock on the table for the right ones.”

The medium said the letters one by one until the first knock. “—B, C.” One knock. Then she started over. “A, B, C—” They all listened, holding their breath, in an atmosphere of dread and excitement. “—G, H, I.” One knock. And all over again. “A, B, C, D, E.” One knock.

One more run through the alphabet and they had a complete word. _C.I.E.L._

Elizabeth had been expecting this since the first letter and yet she gasped when the name was completed. By her side, she could feel Ciel shaking like a man with a fever.

“The spirit wants to say something else!” Madame Edna proclaimed, and she went through the alphabet again.

After only the first two letters of the new word, Ciel wrenched his hand from Elizabeth’s grip and his chair was thrown down to the floor.

“Don’t you _dare!_ ” he spat out.

Elizabeth opened her eyes, and saw that everyone around the table had done the same. They were all looking at Ciel with appalled fascination. He had stood up and put his hands on the table as though he needed to brace himself. He was trembling but his eye was locked on Madame Edna, glaring with unmitigated venom.

“Lord Phantomhive,” Lady Pickering said with a hint of uncertainty. “You cannot interrupt the séance. This could prove dangerous to—”

“ _Shut your mouth._ ”

There was something raw and awful in his voice, as if he might snap completely and it was uncertain whether the result would be everyone’s destruction, or his own. Shocked into silence, Lady Pickering gaped at him and didn’t try to stop him when he pushed away from the table and marched toward the door. Mr Miller, braver or more stupid, rose from his chair and made an attempt at grabbing him. Ciel shoved him away with a haste that might have been panic.

“Don’t _touch_ me!”

He stormed out, leaving the company plunged into stupefied silence. Elizabeth stood up hesitantly, wondering what to do. Was Ciel going to get back on the carriage they’d shared, and leave her and Sieglinde behind? It didn’t feel right to just stay and attend the rest of the séance as if nothing had happened, though, so Elizabeth went to Lady Pickering with the three shillings they owed her.

“I—I’m very sorry about this. I don’t know—” She _did_ know what had her fiancé so upset, and since she wasn’t sure how much of what had happened was a hoax from the lady and her medium, it felt wrong to apologise more. “I think we better leave.”

Lady Pickering looked down at the coins Elizabeth had just given her. “I think so too,” she said, her voice unusually cool. “I think it would be better if you didn’t come back.”

Elizabeth had absolutely no intention to come back. “We are in agreement,” she said, trying to match the woman’s tone. 

With a look of apology to Flora and Andrew Collins, Elizabeth left the room with Sieglinde in tow. 

\---

His thoughts were a maelstrom, and he was lost in the middle of it. He strode down the hallways, so blind with fury and terror and other emotions he couldn’t identify that he barely knew where he was going. People—servants, most likely—tried to talk to him and maybe stop him, but he ignored everyone until he heard a dispassionate voice ask him, “Did something happen, my lord?”

“Sebastian,” Ciel said, angry with himself for being relieved at the demon’s presence. “I had to leave, put a stop to it, this séance was—She was going to say _that_ name.”

“What name?” Sebastian asked.

Ciel stopped dead. They were in the front hall, and a pair of armour suits were looming disapprovingly from the corners. Ciel looked at Sebastian with narrowed eyes, and the butler wasn’t smiling but Ciel was familiar with that ironical slant of his eyebrows. They’d never discussed this, not once in the seven years of their contract. Ciel knew Sebastian must be aware of the truth, but he’d never wanted to give the blasted demon more power by admitting it. But he could recognise the challenge in Sebastian’s question, and he had never once not risen to a challenge.

“ _My_ name,” he said in a strained whisper. He felt mad and furious; it wasn’t the first time it’d happened to him, but that didn’t make it any easier to bear. He took a deep breath, trying to speak in a more controlled voice. “She was going to make her supposed ghost say my bloody name.”

“Oh,” Sebastian said. “Interesting. Who was that ghost supposed to be?”

 _Ciel._ That cussed woman must have done her research, and it was only natural since it was how her kind managed their tricks, but how could she have known that he’d come tonight? Was she trying to intimidate him, give him a warning, or was it just her normal order of business? He still couldn’t quite convince himself that the voice he’d heard during the night was only a dream, and combined with the séance it was too strange of a coincidence. Was it all part of a scare campaign, or could it be that—?

“Sebastian,” he said very, very softly, almost a murmur. “Do you know—Have you ever encountered ghosts before?”

Sebastian cocked an eyebrow. “This séance must have been quite the experience, if you’re asking me this question.”

“Well, have you or not?”

“I can’t say that I have, although I’m only interested in human souls as far as I can feed on them. The reapers are sloppy enough that I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t lose some of their charges from time to time.”

Ciel turned his back on him, clenching his fists. “What a perfectly useless answer.”

“Ciel!”

He saw Elizabeth and Sieglinde rush toward him, and now that his mind had cleared a little he felt a stab of guilt at having momentarily forgotten about them.

“Ciel.” Elizabeth stopped in front of him and her eyes raked over him, as if checking for wounds. “Are you—”

She probably wanted to ask him if he was all right, but fortunately she thought better of it and didn’t finish her question. He was too exhausted to lie to her. They went back to their rented house in perfect silence, and it was only once they’d arrived that Ciel peeled off his gloves and said, “Madame Edna is at the centre of it all.”

His hands were still shaking and he pressed them together to stop it. He went into the parlour and the girls followed him.

“What do you mean?” Sieglinde asked. “If it’s because she mentioned your brother—”

Ciel stiffened, feeling his heartbeat quicken to a mad pace. Elizabeth hissed, “Sieglinde!” and Sieglinde replied, “I know, I know, and I wouldn’t have mentioned it if it wasn’t relevant to what’s happening now. The second name the medium was starting to spell out was your brother’s name, wasn’t it, Ciel?”

Ciel’s shoulder sagged under an invisible weight. It was only natural, although he’d tried not to think about it too much, that Sieglinde would have asked Elizabeth about his brother after the scene at the Pump Room. Elizabeth would have told her what she knew, which wasn’t the whole truth but enough of it that he hadn’t wanted to discuss it with either of them. He still didn’t want to discuss any of it, but Sieglinde was right that this wasn’t the time for him to be oversensitive. He dropped into a chair, feeling like his legs had been cut from under him.

“It was,” he said shortly.

Sieglinde didn’t ask what the full name had been. She must have wondered about it, and about what his brother had been like, what sort of relationship they’d had, how he had died, but she didn’t ask any of those questions. It was a good thing, because he would have found himself shamefully, utterly incapable of answering them. 

“How do you think she might have known that?” she asked instead. 

She looked and sounded business-like, and it allowed Ciel to answer in the same way. “In any number of ways,” he said. “Mediums like her make their bread and butter of knowing as much as they can about their marks. But I’d told no one I wanted to attend a séance before I told you in the morning, so this makes her targeting me a little strange.”

“We told Flora in the afternoon,” Elizabeth pointed out. “She’s a lovely girl but a bit of a gossip, so she might have repeated it to someone else.”

“This still doesn’t give Madame Edna a lot of time to—to find out things about me. I’ve thought about it in the carriage—” What he meant was that a few jumbled thoughts had knocked furiously against each other inside his brain, but he _had_ managed to come to a conclusion. “She must have been researching me beforehand, and since I’ve never publicly manifested any great interest in spiritualism, then she must have done so for reasons unrelated to her business.”

“You mean, the investigation,” Sieglinde said. “She’s trying to put you off the case. But what’s her role in all this? Do you think she might also be behind the men who attacked us?”

“No,” Ciel said, shaking his head. “This was a very different sort of tactic—a lot less refined. I think the men were hired by Lord Blackwood, who doesn’t want me to find out the truth for other reasons. He doesn’t know anything about me if he thinks this was enough to scare me. _She_ knows more.” How much more? A shiver ran down his spine at the mere thought. 

“Do you think she murdered those men?” Elizabeth asked. “Why would she do this?”

“I don’t know.” He’d heard something today that had caught his attention, the hint of an answer, but his mind was a mess and he couldn’t remember it right now. “But pretending to be a ghost is what she does for a living. I think—” He cut himself mid-sentence, having found something in his trousers pocket that he was certain hadn’t been there before. He pulled it out, and saw that it was a folded piece of paper.

“What is it?” Sieglinde asked, puzzled.

“It wasn’t in my pocket earlier,” Ciel said slowly, holding the paper gingerly between the very tip of his thumb and forefinger. “Someone put it there.”

Madame Edna had never been close enough to him to do it. No one had approached him, except for—Ciel clenched his jaw. Mr Miller had made a grab for him when he’d tried to leave the room, and Ciel had been upset enough then that he could have missed the man slipping something in his pocket. Mr Miller, who, according to Elizabeth and Sieglinde, had been such a sceptic during their first séance. 

“Is there a message on it?” Elizabeth asked anxiously.

Ciel unfolded the paper. “‘If you want answers,’” he read out loud, “‘Come at midnight at the King’s Bath.’” He examined the paper for any mark. “That’s all it says.”

“‘Come at midnight’? This is obviously a trap!” Elizabeth said. “You won’t go, right, Ciel?”

“Of course it’s a trap. This message, right after the séance—she’s hoping I’ll be upset enough to fall for it.” He caught himself looking at the clock: ten thirty, only an hour and a half away from the meeting time. He might just be upset enough to fall for it—but what if he managed to catch her, or her accomplice? Not to mention that— “I’ve had Sebastian watch Lord King and the others for the past few days, and last night too. If she wants to get to Lord King again, or any of the others… Maybe this meeting is also a distraction. Sebastian.” The butler materialised from the shadows. “You’ll get back to your surveillance. She’s going to try something tonight. I want you to catch her and bring her to me.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“You’re going to that meeting,” Sieglinde said, sounding accusatory. “Are you mad?”

“Ciel!” Elizabeth cried out. “Why are you considering this? And you’re sending Sebastian away? Who’s going to protect you?”

He looked her straight in the eye. “You are.” She gaped at him. “Did you bring a sword?”

“I—no! I thought we were going on a vacation!”

“Sebastian will find you one. Or two, since it seems to be your preference.”

“I’ll find something suitable for you, my lady,” Sebastian said and immediately left to fulfil the request.

Sieglinde and Elizabeth tried again to talk him out of going, but he didn’t listen to them. He knew it was risky, but he wouldn’t get ahead of his opponent without risking anything. And the message had been right on one account: he was ready to get answers. 

“Then I’m coming too,” Sieglinde said as if it were the foregone conclusion to their discussion.

“What? No!”

“I’m coming with Wolfram,” she said. “It’ll be helpful to have someone else to protect you.”

“I could ask him to come without you,” he said, but she only laughed at him. 

He gave up on trying to convince her not to come, just like she and Elizabeth gave up on trying to convince him not to go, and he went upstairs for a nap before it was time for the midnight meeting. He would need all the rest he could get, and he was also hoping to recover some clarity of mind. 

He felt a flicker of unease upon entering his bedroom, remembering the voice he’d heard the night before. The room was dark and he was seized by a sudden urge to turn on the electric light, but he repressed it and went to lie down over the bed’s covers, only taking off his shoes. As he fell asleep and started dreaming, he was, without surprise, assailed with images of his brother. They weren’t really memories, because they were both running through the grass—an almost unheard-of occurrence—and he was running ahead with his brother trailing behind him. _Wait for me!_ he could hear his brother call, but it didn’t slow him down. It was exhilarating, that feeling that he could run as far as he wanted without ever being tired or short of breath, that absolute freedom that had to be almost what flying felt like. He laughed and ran, and then turned around to tell his brother, _Beat you there_ , but found himself standing in the middle of a vast, rippling expanse of grass, all alone.

“Ciel?” he called timidly. “Ciel? Ciel! _Ciel!_ ”

He started running again, this time in panic, calling his brother’s name all the way. He couldn’t recognise anything, didn’t know where he’d come from or if he was even running in the right direction, and, worst of all, he couldn’t find his twin anywhere. How could have he run so far and so fast as to lose him? What if he could never find him again? Sobs bubbled up his throat and made him choke, and his vision was blurred with tears. He stumbled on something in the grass and tumbled down on all four, hurting his hands and knees.

This was when he heard it: _Please, no, help me!_

“Where are you?” he yelled. 

_Please, no! Nooooo!!_

Ciel woke up. _Help me!_ The small, muffled voice echoed clearly in the room. He sat up and then didn’t move for a long moment, waiting to hear it again, but there was only silence. 

_Am I going crazy?_

His chest ached, and when he rubbed his face he found his cheeks wet. He hadn’t cried from a dream in years. He didn’t know what time it was, but it didn’t feel like he’d been asleep for long. He slipped into his shoes and made his way downstairs. There, he found Sieglinde and Elizabeth still in the parlour where he’d left them, and the clock let him know that it was time to go.

He opened his mouth to tell that to the girls, but what came out instead was, “Did you hear anything?”

Elizabeth blinked. “Such as?”

Sieglinde was frowning, maybe remembering that he’d asked her the same question the night before, so he hurried to say, “It’s time to leave. We shouldn’t make a master of the spirits wait.”

The central area of the city benefited from electrical street lighting, which made the journey from their lodgings to the Baths a lot less sinister than it could have been. The balls were over at that time and they came across very few night strollers. An atmosphere of quiet and peace reigned upon the night, something nice and cosy that seemed at odds with the notion of vengeful ghosts. When they reached the King’s and Queen’s Baths, Ciel hesitated. There was nothing in the note specifying where exactly they should be expecting their mystery correspondent. Ciel looked at the façade of the baths, the columns and triangular front made in imitation of a Roman temple, and on an impulse, he climbed the front stairs that led him to the baths’ entrances. The door on the left would take them to the King’s Bath, whereas the one on the right led to the Queen’s Bath. Ciel tried the King’s entrance, and found it open.

His companions joined him, Wolfram carrying Sieglinde his arms. The German butler looked at the dark opening with deep suspicion. 

“We’re not going in there, my lady,” he told Sieglinde. “It’s a trap,” he added in German.

“We have to, Wolf,” she said with a sigh. “Ciel is going. Aren’t you, Ciel?”

“You don’t have to come,” he said and then stepped inside the building.

“Ciel, wait!”

This was Elizabeth, who had unsheathed the two swords Sebastian had procured her. It seemed like a good idea, and Ciel imitated her by pulling out his gun. The interior of the building was dark and echoing. They advanced prudently, having been rejoined by a grumbling Wolfram, who was still carrying his precious burden. The temperature was cool and it smelled damp, although not in an unpleasant way. They couldn’t hear any other steps than their own, but their own made a lot more noise than Ciel was comfortable with.

“Do you think that when they said, ‘the King’s Bath’, it meant that we should go by the pool?” Sieglinde asked in a whisper. 

It seemed as good an idea as any. Even if Ciel had never been inside the building, and Elizabeth and Sieglinde had only frequented the neighbouring bath, it wasn’t hard to find the pool. The water lapped softly against the stone edges, the surface of the water reflecting the starry sky. Ciel walked between two columns by the side of the pool, and looked up at the big, dark windows from the part of the Pump Room’s building that encroached upon the King’s Bath. His grip on his gun tightened. Was it a shadow that he’d just seen flitting behind the window? Had someone been watching for them?

“Did you see this?” he asked. “I think I—”

Something echoed behind them, and they all whirled around. Wolfram put Sieglinde down on the floor next to a column. The blades of Elizabeth’s swords gleamed under moonlight. 

“Someone’s here,” she whispered.

Two silhouettes, all clad in black, emerged into the pool area. Wolfram charged forward at one of them while Elizabeth went to the second one. Ciel looked around for other assailants, then up again at the windows, trying to catch another glimpse of the shadow. He trusted Wolfram and Elizabeth to take care of the two intruders, but this seemed too easy. There must be—

“Ciel, watch out!” Sieglinde cried.

Ciel only had the time to see a shadow, which had been hiding in one of the recesses on the left side of the pool, leap out of it and toward him. He shot at it, and didn’t know if he had touched it because it didn’t stop moving until it collided into him. Thrown out of balance, he had to take a step back, but his foot encountered only emptiness. Then he fell backward and hit the pool’s water hard. 

The shock made him lose a few seconds and then he found himself sinking fast, dragged down by the weight of his clothing. The water was hot and tasted like iron; it rushed into his mouth, into his nose as he flailed, trying to get himself back to the surface. But it was too dark outside and he was half-blind at the best of time. He couldn’t make out up from down and he was getting tired rapidly, his arms aching, his chest aching. A white noise filled his mind, signalling that he was about to lose consciousness, and it was so hot he felt like he was being boiled to death as well as drowning. A sad death for the Queen’s watchdog.

_I don’t want to die! Not now, not like this!_

He kicked his legs desperately, reaching out with his hands. His ears were ringing, like the bells of a church on a Sunday, his thoughts slipping away from him like water in a drain.

_Ciel._

The name rang out in his mind right before he let go of everything.


	9. Chapter 9

“Ciel, watch out!”

Sieglinde had been trying to make herself fade into the shadows so she wouldn’t be a target and wouldn’t be in the fighters’ way, but when she saw Ciel disappear into the pool’s dark waters she couldn’t help taking a few steps forward, as if she had any way to help him, as if she weren’t completely useless in that sort of situation.

“Ciel!”

Lizzie had rushed to the side of the pool, ignoring the person she’d been fighting—Wolfram took over, now facing three opponents including the one who’d thrown Ciel in the pool. Lizzie tore at her hat, coat, and shoes, and started hacking her dress with one of her swords. Then she jumped into the pool, vanishing in her turn under its obsidian surface. Sieglinde pressed her back against a wall, trying to watch everything at the same time: Wolfram tangling with the three shadows, all the darkened recesses where someone else could he hiding, and the surface of the pool, where Ciel and Lizzie had disappeared and Sieglinde’s heart had gone with them. How long had it been since Lizzie had jumped into the water? How long since Ciel had fallen? Lizzie wouldn’t come back without Ciel; what if they _both_ drowned?

“My lady!”

The grunts from the fight had stopped and when Sieglinde glanced in that direction, she saw that Wolfram had knocked down their attackers and dragged them into a heap. Presumably they weren’t all dead, because Wolfram positioned himself at a spot where he could both watch them and Sieglinde. 

“Are they—” he started to say, and then trailed off.

Are they still in the pool? Are they _dead_? Sieglinde tried to make herself answer something, but words seemed to be beyond her at the moment and then the surface of the pool broke and a blond head emerged, a pale spot under the moonlight. Sieglinde couldn’t really see Ciel but Lizzie appeared to struggle with swimming back to the edge, as if carrying a burden.

“Go help her, Wolf!” Sieglinde ordered. He seemed to be hesitating, probably worried about her safety, but Sieglinde wouldn’t worry about mysterious assailants when her friends were drowning. “Wolfram, _go_!”

He leaped into the pool and easily managed to tow both Lizzie and Ciel back to safety. Dripping with water, Lizzie was shaking and coughing, but Ciel wasn’t moving at all. Wolfram deposed him in the stone floor and there he lay, still as death.

“Help him, oh, help him!” Lizzie begged between bouts of coughing. “You have to—”

Sieglinde kneeled by Ciel’s side. He’d lost his hat in the pool and his wet hair looked as dark as her own. She put a trembling hand on his chest but couldn’t feel it rise and fall, and when she put her ear to his mouth she couldn’t hear anything.

“He’s not breathing,” she said numbly.

“What can you do to help?” Lizzie asked. 

There was nothing but pure, earnest faith in her in Lizzie’s voice, and it propelled Sieglinde into action. She’d saved Ciel’s life once before; she just had to do it again today. Failure wasn’t even an option. She turned his head to the side and let pool water drain from his nose and mouth and then put his head back to the centre. She pinched his nose and breathed into his mouth several times. His lips were wet but strangely warm—although they were rapidly cooling—and his cheeks were flushed from the bath water’s high temperature. His chest still wasn’t rising so she did it again, and again, and again. She could hear Lizzie’s laboured breathing as she watched Sieglinde try to revive her fiancé but it sounded distant, as though happening on the other side of a glass pane. Ciel was her entire focus, the stillness of his chest, the air she breathed into his mouth. _Come on, Ciel. Don’t let them win. Do_ not _let them win._

Maybe this mental encouragement was all Ciel needed, because the next time she paused to check on his breathing she saw his chest spasm. She helped him roll to his side, and he coughed and vomited more water and then coughed again. In fact, he didn’t stop coughing for long moment while Sieglinde and Lizzie watched him helplessly.

“Ciel?” Lizzie called in a small voice. “Can you hear me?”

He opened his eye to glare at her, although he was still coughing too much to be able to speak. Lizzie let out a short, wet laugh at his peeved look and helped him sit up, her arms wrapped around his shoulders. After a few more seconds, his cough started to subside and he didn’t look on the verge of dying anymore. Sieglinde suddenly felt the rest of the world around her snap back into focus now that Ciel was safe, and she became acutely aware of certain things: Lizzie, whose torn dress revealed wet petticoats that clung to her legs, one bare shoulder escaping from her bodice, and Ciel, the memory of his open mouth against hers as she breathed into him, her hand curled around the side of his face. 

“It was definitely a trap, then,” said a voice that came from the shadows.

Sieglinde started, but didn’t have the time to be too alarmed before she saw that it was only Sebastian. From the unhurried way he walked up to them it looked like he had been standing there for a moment.

“Were you just standing there?” Ciel said in a hoarse whisper, echoing Sieglinde’s thoughts. 

“It looked like Lady Sieglinde had everything under control,” Sebastian replied. 

Ciel shrugged off Lizzie’s arms. “So, did something happen?” 

“As you so cleverly foresaw, someone tried to attack Lord King tonight. With a knife—it seems that time for subtlety has passed for our murderer. I stopped the attack, but the perpetrator ran away, although I think I managed to wound them.”

“Why didn’t you chase them down?”

“I felt that you were in danger, my lord, and you know the terms. Your life comes first.”

What kind of terms was Sebastian talking about? Sieglinde looked over at Ciel, but his face was a mask, and only his eye was blazing at Sebastian, as if he felt that the butler had said too much and was angry about it. Sebastian had implied to her once that he and Ciel had met when they were captives from a demon-worshipping cult—they could have drawn some sort of alliance between them at the time, when Sebastian had agreed to serve Ciel.

“I was perfectly well taken care of,” Ciel said dismissively. “There was no need for you here.”

“You only almost _drowned_ ,” Sieglinde said, annoyed that he would be so casual about it. Lizzie, too, had narrowed her eyes at his remark.

“But I didn’t, thanks to you two. Sebastian, what can you tell us about the person you saw?”

“They’d painted their face with glowing paint, but kept a hood on until they were at Lord King’s house. They wore male clothing, but they were rather short for a man. Even shorter than you, young master.”

“That last comment was useless, Sebastian,” Ciel said. “So, you think it was a woman, then.”

“Possibly. Ah!” Sebastian raised a finger, as though only remembering now some minor element. “He or she entered Lord King’s house using a key.”

They looked at him in gawking silence, and he took on an air of smug satisfaction at the effect his announcement had on his audience. 

“A key?” Lizzie said. “Could they be one of Lord King’s servant?”

“Why come in a disguise, then? They could have changed inside the house,” Sieglinde objected.

“But what if—” Ciel started to say but then he coughed and couldn’t finish his sentence.

“I think we’d better go back and rest, my lord,” Sebastian said, already bowing down to Ciel’s level.

He bundled up his young master in his own coat and then scooped him in his arms as if he weighed no more than a child. Ciel must have been terribly exhausted, because he let it happen without a word of protest and immediately closed his eye. Wolfram offered his own coat to Lizzie and then went to check on the unconscious bodies of their attackers. Two of them were dead, and Wolfram said he would take care of the bodies.

“Take the live one to the house,” Ciel mumbled without opening his eye. “We’ll interrogate him.”

They went back to the Royal Crescent in a pitiful procession. Lizzie and Sieglinde, holding hands, trailed wearily behind Sebastian. In his butler’s arms Ciel didn’t try to talk again, only coughing weakly from time to time. Each time he coughed, Sieglinde could see Lizzie press her lips tightly, her delicate eyebrows joining in a concerned frown. At the house, they were met with a frantic Paula who exclaimed at the dismal sight of Lizzie with her ruined dress and the mess of her drying hair. Ciel, who had fallen asleep during the returning trip, didn’t receive half as much concern from the maid. She probably held him responsible for her mistress’ state, not without reason, and for that terrible sin she almost ignored him completely. 

Sieglinde went to bed without wasting time, knowing that Sebastian would take care of Ciel and Paula would take care of Lizzie. She spent a long time lying there, eyes on the ceiling, replaying the images of Ciel and Lizzie vanishing under the water. 

\---

The next morning, Ciel woke up with a low-grade fever and a persistent cough. 

“You should have known that drowning wouldn’t agree with you, young master,” said Sebastian, shaking his head like a reproving mother as he looked at the thermometer. 

“It’s not like I did it on purpose!” Ciel replied peevishly, hands knotted into his bed sheet.

Sieglinde and Lizzie dutifully sat at Ciel’s bedside, watching him argue with Sebastian. He looked frail and sick sitting in bed in his nightgown, pillows piled at his back, his cheeks flushed from the fever or from annoyance. 

“One does wonder, sometimes,” Sieglinde said, not ready to let this rest yet. “You _knew_ it was a trap meant for you.”

“It ended well, though, didn’t it?”

 _I could have done without needing to revive you!_ Sieglinde almost said but then she was struck by the memory of her mouth over Ciel’s and she held back the words. Once, when she was a young girl who had been raised in isolation by a soldier, when she had just met Ciel and didn’t feel quite as strongly about him as she did now, she might have voiced her inappropriate thoughts. He would have turned a lovely shade of red, stuttered and scolded her for being impossible. Did he remember how she had helped him breathe again? Did he think about it beyond the practical fact that it had saved his life? Ciel was a very practical person, but Sieglinde remembered how flustered he’d been because of one little undone button on her nightdress and thought he couldn’t be entirely practical all the time.

Then Lizzie spoke, and the sound of her voice made something inside Sieglinde quiver in shame at the turn her thoughts had taken.

“What happened to the man we brought back last night?” Lizzie asked. 

“Sebastian delivered him to Inspector Carmichael after a little questioning early this morning,” Ciel said after a cough. “He didn’t know much, but he said that he was hired by a blond woman.”

“Not Madame Edna, then,” Lizzie said.

“Unless she wears a wig during the séances,” Sieglinde said.

“Why would she need to do that?”

“Officially, Madame Edna arrived in town after Lord Clarey’s murder,” Ciel said. “But if she’s the one who killed him, then she must have been in Bath earlier than that but under another identity. When I saw her at the séance, I thought she looked somewhat familiar. This morning I remembered: the first day after our arrival, when we went on a morning walk, I ran into a blond woman.”

“And you think that was her?” Sieglinde said sceptically. “How certain can you be that you’ve recognized her?”

“Not very.” He made a vague gesture with his hand and leaned back against his pillows. He looked too weary to be debating a murder case. “Everything we have against her is circumstantial, and we’re also lacking a motive. I have an idea, but I’ll need to check my notes on what we found in the papers.”

“You need to rest,” Lizzie interjected, and Sieglinde nodded emphatically. “You almost died yesterday!”

“I’ll be in bed, resting all the time. I actually have a mission for you two.”

Sieglinde looked at him with suspicion, hoping that this ‘mission’ wasn’t something he was giving them so they wouldn’t try to stop him from overexerting himself. He returned her look steadily.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I don’t think Madame Edna, if indeed that was her, will strike again tonight. She’s faced another failure, and she might be injured. Lord King’s murder seems to be a personal matter—or why would she feel the need for this ghost business?—so she will want to take care of it herself. I, on the other hand, am just an obstacle to be taken down. She might try to send other minions if she thinks I can still be a problem. We need to give her the impression that I won’t be.”

“How can we do that?” asked Lizzie.

“Flora Collins. You said she was a gossip, am I right?” Lizzie nodded. “And she knows Lady Pickering. You’ll call upon her today. I’m sure she’ll expect it, given what happened last night.”

So many things had happened last night that it took Sieglinde a moment to realise he meant what happened at the séance, and the dramatic way he’d departed. He was able to deliver that last sentence without an ounce of emotion, though, cool as the water from a mountain stream. 

“You’ll tell her I’ve been taken ill,” he went on. “Don’t give any details, it’ll excite her curiosity and her need to share it with others all the more. Eventually, it should get back to Madame Edna’s ears.”

“You _have_ been taken ill,” Sieglinde pointed out.

He cast her an irritated look. “Make it sound worse than it really is.”

He stifled a cough and then looked even more irritated. He kept trying to contain his coughing as though he thought that if he managed it, they wouldn’t notice that it didn’t sound very good. For someone so smart—and Sieglinde loved his quick mind, how she never had to explain something to him twice—he could act in extraordinarily stupid ways. After leaving Ciel’s room, Lizzie suddenly turned to Sieglinde.

“His cough sounds bad, doesn’t it?” she said, looking anxious.

“Yes, I don’t like it either,” Sieglinde said. “But he’s so stubborn! Does he have a history of asthma?”

Lizzie’s eyes widened. “What—why do you ask?”

“The way his coughing sounds reminds me of it. Does he, then?”

“I—” Lizzie shiftily avoided Sieglinde’s eyes. “I’m not sure. It’s possible.”

Lizzie wasn’t a very good liar, not that Sieglinde had many occasions to notice it. Why she felt the need to do it now, on such a topic, was absolutely confounding. Would it make him unfit for his watchdog’s duty, if his sickness was known? But surely Lizzie knew that Sieglinde would never do anything that might cause Ciel harm. Sieglinde let the topic go, but she felt a bit wounded by her friend’s lack of trust. 

After a light luncheon, they went to visit the Collinses, leaving Ciel to his notes and the theories he had yet to share with them. Flora Collins welcomed them with her usual cheerfulness, but Sieglinde thought she could detect a hint of nervousness under it. Her brother was polite, but a lot more reserved than he usually was. When it looked like neither of them would mention the previous night, maybe out of courtesy, Sieglinde decided to take the matter into her own hands.

“We’re very sorry for what happened yesterday,” she said. “I hope we didn’t cause any problem for you with Lady Pickering, Flora, since you were the one who introduced us to her.”

The twins exchanged a very quick look. “Oh, please, don’t apologise,” Flora said.

“Lord Phantomhive was very right to be upset,” Mr Collins said. “I maintain that this is all a fraud, and that medium’s conduct was disgusting.”

“It was different with Mrs Darlington,” Flora said. “She’d obviously come hoping to talk to her husband, but Lord Phantomhive seems to be very—private. How is he, by the way?”

It was Sieglinde and Lizzie’s time to share a look. “He’s been confined to bed since yesterday evening,” Sieglinde said. “The shock, you see, and his health has never been the best.”

From the corner of her eye, she saw Lizzie try to contain a wince. “We’re very worried,” Lizzie said, and the concern in her voice didn’t sound faked. 

“I can imagine,” Flora murmured. “Oh, I’m so very sorry.”

There were genuine tears of distress in her pale eyes, and her brother reached out to fold his hand over hers. He didn’t look surprised by her sudden apology, so it must have been something they’d already discussed with each other. Sieglinde, on the other hand, had no idea what this was about, and Lizzie seemed just as confused. 

“What do you have to be sorry for?” Lizzie asked gently.

“I’m the one who brought up the séances in the first place. If I hadn’t insisted you came with me…”

“Oh, but that second time was all Ciel’s idea! _He_ wanted to go, and nothing you did or said could have influenced him. He is—” Lizzie had the small smile of the very in love. “He follows his own idea, always.”

Flora sniffed discreetly. “I’m glad you see it that way. Well, I don’t think I shall attend another one of those séances, anyway. As my brother said, what Madame Edna did was foul. And she might be fearing scandal, because tonight’s séance at Lady Pickering’s has been cancelled.” 

Sieglinde and Lizzie shared another look. “Has it, now?” Sieglinde said. “Do you know why?”

“Lady Pickering says that Madame Edna is not feeling well.” Flora hesitated for a second. “She seemed to imply that the disruption of yesterday’s séance was affecting the medium, but of course this is absurd. This is all just theatrics.”

 _That, or she’s been wounded by Sebastian last night,_ Sieglinde thought. Another piece of evidence to add to Ciel’s theory that she was the murderer, although it wasn’t conclusive by itself. Reassured that Sieglinde and Lizzie weren’t cross at her Flora’s mood brightened again, and her brother’s followed the same course. Watching how attuned the twins were to each other, Sieglinde wondered if it had been the same for Ciel and his brother. Asking him about it was, of course, completely out of the question, and Lizzie always looked very nervous when the topic was broached, an almost guilty sort of nervousness that Sieglinde couldn’t interpret. She felt like her friend was hiding something from her, but had no idea what it might be or why she would feel the need. 

They chatted the afternoon away with Flora and Andrews. Nothing was spoken of the attack on Lord King last night; given how aware the twins were of everything that happened in the city, this would indicate that the man had chosen to keep the incident quiet. By the time Sieglinde and Lizzie went back to the house, they were told by Sebastian that Ciel had fallen asleep in the middle of work. Unwilling to disturb him from his much-needed rest, they dined on their own and then retired to the library. Sieglinde resumed her reading of the ghost story anthology while Lizzie idly thumbed through a volume of Wordsworth poetry, sometimes glancing up at Sieglinde as though she had something to say. Sieglinde waited, expectant, but Lizzie never seemed to summon the courage to actually speak about whatever was on her mind. Eventually, Sieglinde immersed herself fully into her reading and stopped being aware of her surroundings. 

Hours later, she came back to herself. It was dark outside, and at some point, Lizzie had turned on the electrical light. Lizzie was now asleep in her chair, her head resting over her folded arms, a book open in her lap that was in danger of sliding down to the floor if she so much as shifted positions. Sieglinde put down her own book and took the moment to drink in the sight of Lizzie’s peaceful sleeping face, her lovely eyelashes casting delicate shadows over her cheeks. How late was it? The house was deeply silent, the quiet of sleep, and Sieglinde felt sneaky just for being awake. She yawned and stretched, feeling only now how much she ached from staying in the same position too long. Lizzie would be in pain, too, if she kept sleeping in such an uncomfortable posture. Sieglinde went to her, intending to wake her up so they could both go to bed. She was standing by Lizzie’s chair, her hand an inch from her friend’s shoulder, when a cry rang out.

“ _Ciel!_ ”

Lizzie started awake, her confused green eyes meeting Sieglinde’s. “What was that?” she asked.

“I think it came from Ciel’s room,” Sieglinde said. 

It had been Ciel’s voice, too, but why would Ciel yell his own name? Lizzie had already sprung out of her chair, and Sieglinde had no choice but to follow her as she darted out of the library and in direction of Ciel’s bedroom. 

They found him tearing the room apart. He had yanked down the curtains, flipped over the carpet, knocked down the bookcase, and was in the process of trying to drag the wardrobe away from the wall. He was breathing too harshly, the air hissing out of his lungs, but even though it was obvious that his strength was failing him he kept pulling at the massive piece of furniture with desperate urgency. Sieglinde and Lizzie approached him at a slow pace, wary of spooking him.

“Ciel,” Lizzie called him. She was close enough to touch but kept her hands by her sides. “What are you doing? What’s wrong?”

He jumped and spun around, letting go of the wardrobe. He didn’t have his eye-patch on but it was dark enough in the room that Lizzie probably couldn’t see the pattern on his right eye—Sieglinde wouldn’t have been able to discern it if she’d never had a close look before. 

“Lizzie? Sieglinde?” Ciel said, sounding surprised to see them here. He coughed. “I—I think he needs my help. I have to—”

— _help me._

Ciel’s head snapped to the side. “Did you hear?” he whispered. “Ciel?”

In the silence of the room a faint, eerie voice could be heard. _Ciel. Help me, please, no!_

“Oh my God,” Sieglinde said. 

Was that the voice Ciel kept hearing, although he’d never gone as far as admitting he heard anything? Lizzie’s face was also marked with open shock, so she must have heard it too. They were all hearing it, so it couldn’t be a dream or a hallucination. 

“Do you think that—” Lizzie said in a very small voice.

“No,” Ciel said. His voice was cold as a blizzard and his face a hard mask, with no trace of the agitation from a moment before. He took a breath. “There is no ghost. I don’t know how, but someone is pulling a nasty trick on me.”

“Has this happened before?” Lizzie asked. 

“For the past few nights I’ve heard something, but I was always half-asleep at best when it happened, so I could never be sure I hadn’t dreamt it. Some device must be hidden somewhere in the room.”

Lizzie helped him pulled the wardrobe away from the wall, and they did the same with the bed. Nothing was hidden behind or under any of the furniture in the room, so Sieglinde suggested they knock on the walls to check for hollowness, which was how they eventually found a hole under the window, hidden behind a removable panel. After they’d turned on the light, they could see that the paint was scratched on the edge of the panel, indicating that it had been dislodged often. Inside the hole was a small phonograph. 

“Dear Lord,” Elizabeth said in a breath. “How long has it been here?”

“A few days, at least,” Ciel said. 

He grabbed the handle on the side and wound up the device. At first, they could hear nothing but white noise and then they heard the same eerie voice from before, only clearer and louder. “Help, oh please, help me!” After a moment of silence, there was another series of generic cries for help.

“This sounds nothing like him,” Ciel said, his words clipped. “By researching me she must have learned that we were kidnapped together, and that only I had returned. She was only guessing that I’d watched him die, but even if I hadn’t this could have been effective. Very clever.”

Sieglinde look at Lizzie and saw that she’d covered her mouth with her hand and that her eyes were bright with tears. She hadn’t known that Ciel had watched his brother die; he must have never told her that much. The cylinder in the phonograph had come to an end, and the device had fallen silent. Ciel took it in his hands and coughed, then stood up. Sieglinde and Lizzie followed him into the hallway. There they found Sebastian, who stood as though he’d been waiting to be needed.

Ciel didn’t look surprised to see him. “Take care of this,” he told Sebastian, holding out the phonograph to him. “I know where it comes from and I don’t want to see it anymore.”

“Of course, young master.”

“The phonograph would have needed to be wound up every night,” Sieglinde said. “It means that—”

“She’s been in the house many times,” Ciel said. “The door slamming, the missing objects. She was there every time. I’m guessing that she’s gone now, but it can’t hurt to check. Sebastian, see to that too.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“But how did she get in?” Lizzie asked.

“Mr Miller,” Ciel said.

“The locksmith?” Sieglinde said, before her mind made the connection. “Oh.”

“I’m fairly sure that Mr Miller was the one who put the note in my pocket the night of the séance. He must have faked his scepticism to cover for the fact that he’s her accomplice. If he gave her a skeleton key, she could have access to a number of houses. This would also explain how the strychnine was added to Lord Clarey’s tonic without the complicity of any of the servants.”

Ciel concluded his tirade with a fit of coughing, but glared in warning when they tried to come closer to him. He turned his back on them and closed the door of his bedroom behind him. Sebastian went downstairs to take care of the phonograph, and Sieglinde and Lizzie went back to the library, as neither of them felt like going to bed after this turn of event. 

Sieglinde looked over at Lizzie, whose face was pale and drawn. “What are you not telling me?” she asked.


	10. Chapter 10

Elizabeth looked up at Sieglinde’s serious expression. “What do you mean?” she said, knowing she was only stalling, that Sieglinde was too smart to be fooled by such pretence. 

“I knew there was something you were hiding, something about Ciel, but I wasn’t going to ask you about it because I thought you must have good reasons for secrecy. I don’t want to pry into your or Ciel’s affairs. I’m only your friend, and maybe not even that as far as Ciel is concerned—” 

“Oh, don’t say that!” Elizabeth exclaimed, even though she’d wondered before about Ciel’s view of Sieglinde. Hearing her say _I’m only your friend_ hurt in unexpected ways. “I know he holds you in great regard.”

Sieglinde smiled, but there was something pained about it. “I do know that much. But this isn’t what I’m talking about, is it? Whatever is the case, I care greatly about you both. I would carry your secrets to my grave.”

“I know that,” Elizabeth said, wringing her hands. She’d held that particular secret close to her heart for so long that the yearning for another soul to share it with was almost unbearable. “It’s not that I don’t trust you. Don’t believe that, you should _never_ believe that.”

“Why was Ciel calling out his own name?”

Struck dumb by the question, Elizabeth watched her friend without a word. So bright, so clever, and there had been too many clues presented to her. Of course Sieglinde would guess it, or at least come close to it. The secret was there, out in the open at last, and yet speech was eluding Elizabeth. She couldn’t speak of something she never had to put into words before. 

Sieglinde didn’t have the same problem. “We both heard him say it when we were in the library,” she said, “and then once again when we were with him in the bedroom. But when we heard the recording as an eerie ghost voice, his whole demeanour changed. I think that for an instant, confused by sleep and anguish, he really thought this might be the ghost of his brother haunting him. Except that the recording called him ‘Ciel’, and a real ghost would have known it wasn’t his name. Lizzie, am I talking nonsense?”

Elizabeth was amazed at how calmly her friend could lay out the facts as if they were of no consequence. How she could sit there, her pale face surrounded by a halo of black hair, looking like a Madonna carved in stone, just as beautiful and just as serene. Elizabeth was very far from serenity; years of carefully walled up pain and sorrow were pouring out of her heart, spilling in tears down her cheeks. 

“I didn’t know it at first, when he came back,” she whispered, words bursting out one by one from their restraints. “He acted so differently from either of them, and they’d always looked so similar. And I—I suppose I didn’t want to question it. It was easy to believe him, comfortable not to know too much. I said we tried to protect him, but I think we were protecting ourselves just as much, or at least I was. But as the years went by I noticed little discrepancies. Things he didn’t remember, and his cough—”

“He’s an asthmatic, isn’t he?”

“Yes, although it was much worse when he was younger. Ci—his brother didn’t suffer from the same sickness.”

“And you never told him that you knew?” 

“How could I? He obviously didn’t want anyone to know. I could never even talk about ‘his brother’ in the abstract. He would have felt exposed, maybe accused. I didn’t want to destroy the foundations on which he had built himself back up. We’d come so close to losing him entirely.”

Warm tears ran down her cheeks and Elizabeth buried her face in her hands. His pain was her own and she could feel it break her heard anew. Damn Madame Edna to hell for making it fresh again! The past had never been truly gone, the dead were still present in a secret nook of her chest, but at least they had been able to ignore it and be content. 

“Lizzie.”

Elizabeth felt hands on her wrists, and when she opened her eyes she saw that Sieglinde had come up to her. With a sound of clinking metal Sieglinde knelt down at Elizabeth’s feet, rising her face to Elizabeth. She didn’t look so calm anymore but her eyes were full of tears too, and she pulled Elizabeth’s hands to her and kissed her knuckles.

“I’m so sorry, Lizzie,” she said. “I shouldn’t have talked about it. This wasn’t my place to know and I—”

Elizabeth pressed fingers against Sieglinde’s lips and Sieglinde stopped talking at once. Elizabeth joined her on the floor, the fabric of her skirt swishing against Sieglinde’s. She moved her fingers from Sieglinde’s mouth to Sieglinde’s cheek and wiped the single tear that had fallen from her eye with the pad of her thumb. Then she let her hand simply rest there, curling around Sieglinde’s cheek.

“Don’t apologise,” she said. “It—it’s all right. If I had to tell someone, it makes sense that it would be you. I’m only sorry that I had to lie in the first place.”

She’d never had many friends, despite being a friendly person. Training had taken up a lot of her time and had also made her feel alienated from other girls her age. Never with Sieglinde, though, maybe because Sieglinde was already odd in her own way, maybe because she wasn’t very experienced at friendship either. They’d learned alongside each other, and Elizabeth wondered if the fact that they were both a little different meant that the feelings that had developed between them would be different too. Was it normal that looking into the depth of Sieglinde’s eyes made Elizabeth want to lose herself in them? Want to hold her close, to feel her? Was it ordinary friendship that had her heart pounding so? 

Sieglinde reached out and cupped Elizabeth’s cheek with her hand, so that they were touching each other in a mirror image. The gesture made Elizabeth lean closer and then closer still, and Sieglinde must have been moving too because suddenly there was barely any distance left between their faces. Sieglinde’s hand was a little rough from various burns and calluses, and it felt unmistakably hers. She breathed against Elizabeth’s lips, that faint rush of air tickling her skin in a most enticing way. Elizabeth had never even kissed Ciel before and yet she knew with a sense of inevitability that this was what was happening. 

But then she heard something, or maybe caught a glimpse of movement at the corner of her eye. Whatever it was made her turn her head toward the door, and she saw Ciel stand at the threshold. She’d thought he was going back to bed, but in fact he had got dressed, had put his eye-patch back on, and was now looking at them with an expression of frozen shock. Reality reasserted itself to Elizabeth and she pushed away from Sieglinde, shame and fear rushing through her as she thought of what it must look to him. How long had he been standing there? He couldn’t have heard what she’d confessed to Sieglinde, could he?

“Ciel,” she said, getting up to her feet.

His one eye focused on her. “No,” he said.

“I don’t know what you’ve heard,” Elizabeth said, panic gripping her heart. “But please—”

She reached out and he stepped back, then moved as though to run away, so she grabbed his wrist to stop him. 

“Let me go,” he uttered through gritted teeth.

She was stronger than him and he knew it. She could feel him shaking and hated herself for putting him through this, but she felt like if she let him go now she would lose him forever and nothing was more unbearable than that. She pulled him completely inside the room and closed the door behind them. 

“Ciel, please,” she said, still not releasing her grip on him. He had a wild air about him, the look of a wounded animal trapped in a corner. 

“Elizabeth,” he said ferociously, “if you don’t let me go, I will call Sebastian and he will—”

“I just want to talk,” Elizabeth pleaded, moving herself so she stood between him and the door. “Please, we need to talk.”

She let go of him, and since she blocked the door he darted toward the window. He leaned against the edge, his back on the rest of the room. Elizabeth crossed the room to go after him, passing a frightful looking Sieglinde on her way. 

“Ciel,” she said again.

“Why do you keep calling me ‘Ciel’? When you know that—You _know_.”

He sounded as if he spoke through broken glass. Elizabeth closed her eyes briefly, begging the Lord for strength. He _had_ heard her, and there was no turning back now. They had to face this head on, both of them. 

“Listen to me,” she said.

“I can’t—”

“Please, just _listen_ and don’t say anything until I’m finished.” She paused, and when he didn’t say anything, she went on, “I have known for years, and I have made my peace with it. I can’t pretend I understand why you did it, but whatever your reasons are I respect them and I will never make what I know public. I know you won’t be inclined to believe me because I just told Sieglinde—” She glanced in direction of Sieglinde, who was watching the scene with wide eyes. “—but we can trust her to keep it secret too, you know we can. But, beyond that, you have to believe that it doesn’t change anything for me.”

“How can it not—”

“It doesn’t _anymore_. I—I won’t lie and pretend that it wasn’t a shock, and that I didn’t need time to process. You know I loved him. He was my playmate, my best friend, the one I thought I would spend my life with. I loved him, maybe almost as much as you did, and when I realised you weren’t him I had to mourn him all over again.”

A tremor ran through the tense line of his back and he made a choked sound. Elizabeth’s eyes were filled with tears again, but she forced herself to rein them in. What she had to say was important, and she wouldn’t let it drown in tears. She took one step toward him and saw him tense further, so she stilled. 

“But things are different now. I love you.” In all those years of showering him with enthusiastic affection, she had never said the words. She felt a certain relief at letting them out. “I love _you_ ,” she insisted. “Not because the two of you are interchangeable in my eyes. Not because I have to marry you anyway. You are in my heart, and you will remain there even if—even if you decide—” She couldn’t finish that sentence. 

When he finally spoke, it was to say, “Then what did I just witness here?”

Guiltily, Elizabeth looked over again at Sieglinde, who wore an expression that mixed both love and loss. Sieglinde, who was her friend and something more, and who Elizabeth had pushed away as soon as she’d seen Ciel. Was it right to hurt Sieglinde to protect Ciel’s feelings? There had to be a way to preserve them both. 

“I love you,” Elizabeth repeated, “but Sieglinde is—she’s important to me too.”

Elizabeth went to Sieglinde and helped her rise to her feet. “Don’t be afraid,” she said to soothe Sieglinde’s wary expression. “It’s all right.”

“I’m not sure it is,” said Sieglinde. 

Elizabeth led Sieglinde to Ciel, who still held himself rigidly, facing the window. She wished she could see his dear face, but at the same time she was afraid of what she would read on it. 

“Ciel,” she said and then hesitated. “Do you want to call me by your name?”

“No! I—that person is dead. Ciel lives.”

 _Ciel lives_. That simple sentence pierced Elizabeth’s heart like a sword. She said, “Ciel. My darling.” 

She touched his shoulder, and when he didn’t shy away from her, she touched his face and turned it toward her. She was struck at that moment by the specific shade of blue of his eye, even though she’d been seeing it for almost her entire life, and had the thought that it might be her favourite colour in the world. She drew closer to him, slowly so he could escape if he wanted. When he didn’t move, she brought her mouth to his and deposed a kiss on his lips. Softly, so she wouldn’t spook him. He didn’t respond, but didn’t pull away either. He had stopped shaking and the pain in his eye had diminished, leaving shocked wonder in its stead. Elizabeth was still holding Sieglinde’s hand, and when she looked at her friend, she saw that Sieglinde was observing them with open desire, her lips slightly parted and a flush to her cheeks. Elizabeth gently pushed Ciel toward the chair by the window, and he let himself be handled as though under a spell. She felt like an enchantment had been cast on her too, making her act in a way she would have never thought possible. She watched herself tug at Sieglinde’s hand until she stood in front of Ciel, who sat in the chair. 

Sieglinde looked down at Ciel as though she was considering her options and then held his face with both hands, looking him in the eye. 

“You’re the worst,” she said, “and I adore you so very much.” 

Her kiss was nothing as soft and chaste as Elizabeth’s had been. Elizabeth felt her face grow very hot as she watched their mouths move over each other, heard the wet sounds they made, saw Ciel’s ringed hand grip the arm of his chair tightly. When Sieglinde and Ciel separated and Sieglinde made a grab for Elizabeth, it was impossible to even think of resisting her. Suddenly Sieglinde’s mouth was on her too, the shock of her bold tongue against Elizabeth’s lips making Elizabeth open her mouth to let her in. It felt strange, startling, but her heart had never beaten that fast and she had never been so aware of her body, of the way it tingled pleasantly.

Somehow, she found herself sitting on one of the chair’s arms while Sieglinde sat on the other, and the three of them, in a daze, exchanged kisses in an infinite round. Their hands wandered over the naked parts of their bodies, their necks and faces, and over clothed chests and waists. At first, Ciel didn’t touch any of them but then Elizabeth felt his fingers graze the round part of her arm, her shoulder, and the curve of her chin. His necktie got untied and the first button of his shirt undone, so that Elizabeth could see the blush that ran down to his chest. The ribbons in Elizabeth’s hair had slipped and her locks tumbled over her shoulders, and Sieglinde’s hair covered her face in a veil. She was the most daring of the three, her hands demanding and a little frantic, as if she didn’t want to waste time. She was the one whose touch slipped below Ciel’s waist, over the top of his thigh and at a spot that made him yelp. Elizabeth glanced down and saw a shape there, bulging his trousers. Her mouth went dry and she felt abruptly embarrassed by the reality of what she was seeing, shaken out of the trance that had taken a hold on her.

Ciel slapped Sieglinde’s hand away. “Don’t,” he said, pushing himself up. “I can’t—let’s not.”

He shrugged off their hands and got out of the chair. Elizabeth was now painfully aware of how flushed and dishevelled they all were, what a wanton picture they made, and as Ciel walked away, she was seized by the terrible fear that she had wrecked things irreparably between them by pushing too far.

“Ciel!” she called.

He stopped by the door. “I’m going to bed,” he said, his voice rough. “We have much to do in the morning. Don’t—don’t worry,” he added with unusual gentleness and then left the room.

\---

He slept, but it was no restful sleep. He was plagued with dreams of his brother, distorted memories and nightmares of him hurling accusations, standing by the bed in his bloody shirt. Ciel woke up several times during the night, his heart pounding, convinced that he’d heard his brother call for him even if he’d got rid of the phonograph and even if the recorded voice hadn’t actually sounded much like his twin. 

In-between those, he had other dreams of a more—suggestive nature, dreams that were a novelty to him. He was practised at nightmares, but _this_ was something else entirely. He awoke at dawn from one of those dreams, embarrassed by his body’s reactions and by the confusion in his mind. He wasn’t naïve by any means, but thoughts of sex and romance had always existed at the back of his mind as something that was meant for other people. Being engaged to Elizabeth was a fact of life that he’d never thought to change, no more than he would have tried to paint the grass purple. He didn’t _mind_ it, if he was honest with himself, or at least he didn’t mind it anymore, but it was just a part of being Earl Phantomhive. As for Sieglinde, he’d never once imagined that she could be more than a friend and a useful ally, nor had he imagined that she and Elizabeth could start seeing each other in a new light. Yesterday’s events had upset his world, and it made him feel wrong-footed, uncertain about what course of action he should adopt. This wasn’t a sentiment he cared much for.

At the breakfast table with Elizabeth and Sieglinde, it was hard not to feel awkward whenever his eyes met one of the girls’. If Elizabeth’s frequent blushes were any indication, she was feeling just as embarrassed, but Sieglinde looked unapologetic and devoured her breakfast with her usual gusto. Ciel found himself observing them covertly, and thinking. They’d had breakfast together like this since the start of their vacation in Bath, and he’d never really reflected on it. Now, though, he wondered at how natural and peaceful the scene was, and how lonely he would feel when he would be back to eating his breakfast and his other meals on his own. He’d never wanted to have something to lose again, but it had happened without him noticing and he didn’t know how to preserve it. 

Sieglinde reached across the table for a crumpet and her hand brushed Ciel’s, which made him startle and interrupted his thoughts. She glanced up at him, smiling in that snide way of hers that was so infuriating, but, somehow, endearing at the same time. Faced with those circumstances, Ciel dealt with the embarrassment the only way he knew: by getting down to business. 

“I think I figured out yesterday why Madame Edna is doing the things she does,” he said. “And I also have a plan.”

“Oh?” Sieglinde said. “Please, do tell us.” 

“You remember Miss Collins telling us about the Landsdown ghost, I presume.”

“You think this ghost is also Madame Edna’s doing.”

“She was installing a certain climate to prepare for the murders. Maybe issuing a warning to her victims, too, which means that the place is significant in itself. I knew I’d heard that name before, so I checked my notes: ten years ago, there was a series of assaults in Landsdown. Always at twilight, they targeted travellers and strollers who came back too late from their promenades—mostly young women. There weren’t a lot of details about the assaults in the articles I read, so yesterday I had Sebastian ask around and a very interesting fact came to our attention: the perpetrators of those assaults used glowing paint to disguise themselves as ghosts.”

He paused to let that piece of information sink. Elizabeth and Sieglinde looked at him in surprise and then in dawning understanding. 

“But what does it have to do with Madame Edna?” Elizabeth asked. “Do you think she was one of the victims?”

“There was one other article mentioning Landsdown, and it was about a young man who fell to his death there. His name was Paul Stewart, and the article said he was drunk when it happened, but from what Sebastian heard about him he wasn’t inclined to drinking. He also had a younger sister, Agnes. He was her guardian since their parents’ deaths, so when he died too she found herself all alone in the world. After a brief passage at the Female Orphan’s Asylum, a local institution for orphan and unprotected girls, she left for London and no more was heard from her.”

“So, you think that _she_ ’s Madame Edna,” Elizabeth said.

“This is my theory, yes,” Ciel said.

“And that she’s out for revenge,” Sieglinde said. “Against… you think Lord King and his friends were the ones playing the ghosts.”

“Yes, I—” 

He tried to explain that something had come back to him last night about his first time in Bath. He’d only known Lord King and the others from afar and had never wished to know more about them. But his intrepid brother had not been so intimidated. Ciel tried, but he couldn’t make himself explain the situation to Elizabeth and Sieglinde. Even knowing that they knew who he was—that Elizabeth had known for years and had kept it for herself—wasn’t enough to let him discuss certain things openly. The impossibility to get the words out was of an almost physical nature, and he wondered if it would always be so. He found that he _wanted_ to be able to talk to them.

“Yes, I do think so.”

“But why?” Elizabeth said. “Why would they do this?” 

Ciel shrugged. “Idleness, the knowledge that they would get away with it? What matters is that Madame Edna, if she really is Agnes Stewart, absolutely won’t let this go. We need to manufacture the right circumstances to set a trap for her.”

“Oohh,” Sieglinde said. “You have that devious look on your face. Come on, tell us your plan.”

She sounded affectionate when she said this, and her tone of voice was almost as effective in making him blush as the memory of what they’d done yesterday. He didn’t know what was wrong with him, but damn if it wasn’t annoying. He coughed, both because he felt the need for it and to cover for his feeling awkward again. 

“You’re going to use Miss Collins’ talent for gossip again,” he said. “Meanwhile, I’ll go visit Blackwood, King, and Hyde for a little chat.”


	11. Chapter 11

While the girls were gone to the Collinses, Ciel sent word to the three friends to come and have tea with him. Blackwood was the first to arrive, his mood a dark cloud that obscured his immediate surroundings. 

“What are you plotting, Phantomhive?” he thundered at Ciel without even a greeting. 

Fortunately, the man’s impotent anger was of an amusing nature to Ciel. Knowing now that it stemmed from fear, it only made Blackwood look pathetic. 

“A pleasure to see you too, Lord Blackwood,” Ciel said in his most sweetly polite voice. He still felt unusually weary from his ordeal at the King’s Bath and what had followed, but worked on not betraying any of it. “As for the reason for my invitation, I’m afraid I’d rather wait for your friends before I expose it to you.” 

It didn’t take long for King and Hyde to come, and they were served their tea by Sebastian in the formal parlour. Sebastian’s moist angel cakes were delicious, but it wasn’t enough to help Ciel’s guests relax. They were all very tense, watching Ciel with wariness, fear, and suspicion. Lord King had the washed-out look of a man who did not sleep, which was no surprise, but his two friends didn’t seem to fare much better in that department. _Let them stew for a moment_ , Ciel thought as he savoured his cake. _Let them wonder what I’m about to say._

Blackwood was the first to lose patience. “Will you finally tell us what you want? I don’t know about you, but we don’t have all day.”

“Are you enjoying this Ceylon blend?” Ciel said. “It’s a new one from Fortnum and Mason, and I personally find it delightful.” Blackwood looked about to have a fit, and Ciel decided he’d had enough fun for now. “The question isn’t really what I want, Lord Blackwood, but what _you_ want.”

“What do you—”

“You want to be rid of the ghost.”

Lord Blackwood and Mr Hyde looked at him in stupefaction. Lord King didn’t, probably because he was aware of Ciel’s involvement in the case through his visit with Inspector Carmichael—which he didn’t seem to have mentioned to his friends, interestingly.

“What do you know about this?” Mr Hyde asked in a deceptively even voice.

“He knows because he’s behind it!” Blackwood boomed, hands on the arms of his chair as if he wanted to jump out of it. “I always knew it! You sneaky little—”

“Don’t be absurd,” Ciel snapped at him. Sebastian crept closer to Blackwood’s seat and the man sat back down, looking uneasy. “I wouldn’t stoop down to such child play, even if I wanted to harm you. See, I have a great liking for Sir Conan Doyle’s mystery novels, and I do a little detective work in my free time. You could call it a hobby.”

“Really,” Mr Hyde said flatly.

“Really,” Ciel said with a smile, resting his chin on his knuckles. “I know who has killed Lord Clarey and is harassing the three of you now. Because you’ve all seen the ghost, haven’t you?” Their silence spoke louder than words. “I thought so. Well, I know your tormentor’s identity, but I have no proof. To stop them, I propose to set up a trap with the three of you as baits.”

He paused to let the men exclaim and protest. Blackwood looked irate, Lord King terrified, and Mr Hyde was showing the first cracks in his composure. 

“Gentlemen,” Ciel said, raising a hand. He felt a cough rattle in his lungs and stifled it behind a fist. “I can assure you that I won’t let you come to any harm, if this is what worries you.”

“Why not just tell us who you think it is, and let us handle the matter ourselves?” Mr Hyde argued. 

“Because,” Ciel said, looking him in the eye, “it does not please me to do so.”

“We have no reason to even listen to you,” Blackwood said. “Benjamin, Arthur, let’s go.”

“I suggest you do listen to me, Lord Blackwood,” Ciel said. “Otherwise, I might go to the police—Lord King knows I am well acquainted with the local authorities—and tell them everything I know. And I do mean _everything_.”

A heavy silence fell upon the room as the men processed what he’d said and assessed the threat. Ciel’s name had weight that poor Agnes Stewart did not have, even if she’d tried to speak out at the time. He could do damage that she had no power to do. Ciel saw them think it over and decide not to risk it, although with very little grace on Lord Blackwood’s part. 

“What’s your plan to expose the murderer, then?” Mr Hyde asked. 

“After a few attempts on Lord King’s life, the murderer will be wary of trying again. They _will_ try, but we don’t know how soon. Therefore, we need to goad them into action. I have people right now spreading the sort of rumours that our murderer will feel very strongly about.” He didn’t tell them that the rumours that Elizabeth and Sieglinde were spreading through Flora Collins were that the three friends had publicly mocked Paul Stewart for being a drunk who’d died stupidly. “Since we don’t know which one of you three they will want to strike first, I think you should decide to all stay in one place for the next few days. Choose one of your houses, and I will charge someone with trapping the place so that the murderer won’t be able to escape.”

Sebastian could probably catch Madame Edna on his own without trouble if his attention wasn’t divided by Ciel being in danger, but traps that they knew about would reassure the three men, and ensure that they wouldn’t jeopardise the plan out of fear. And Sieglinde would have fun setting up some traps. 

After much discussion, it was finally decided that they would stay at Lord Blackwood’s house, which stood isolated at the fringe of the city and would make for a very enticing location. 

“After this is over, Phantomhive,” Blackwood said as he was leaving, “I will take care of you, I promise.”

“Oh, Lord Blackwood,” said Ciel, demon’s contractor and Her Majesty’s watchdog. “You can certainly try.”

\---

“…one of the doors or windows opening will trigger an electric current, which will light up one of the bulbs on that panel so that we know when they enter the house and where exactly they come from.”

Sieglinde’s audience was a tough one: Lord Blackwood looked to be sulking, Lord King kept shooting glances at every corner in the room, apparently not yet convinced that the one after them wasn’t really a ghost, and Mr Hyde was trying hard to muster polite interest. Ciel and Lizzie had already heard her explanations, though it didn’t keep Lizzie from smiling encouragingly at her. Ciel looked tired and Sieglinde sometimes caught him coughing in his hand, trying to be as discreet about it as he could. They were all gathered in Lord Blackwood’s comfortable library and a fire burned in the fireplace, both because the night was cooler than the previous ones and because it would prevent Madame Edna from going in through the chimney. They’d tried to think of everything. 

“Every point of entrance in this room is rigged and will trigger a trap,” Sieglinde went on with her explanation. “There’s no way they can get to you without being stopped.”

“Except if they _are_ a ghost and can go through the walls,” Lord Blackwood said with biting sarcasm.

Lord King cast his friend a frightful look, and Mr Hyde said, “Rudolph, please. Moderate yourself.”

“ _Moderate_ myself?” Lord Blackwood said. “Am I the only one having doubts about this? We’re putting our lives in the hands of a little girl!”

Sieglinde rolled her eyes. “I don’t think you have much choice in the matter, my lord. Be grateful that this little girl is willing to help you.” 

“She’s merely the most brilliant mind of our time,” Ciel said in a bored voice. “But if this doesn’t suit you, we can always fetch someone less competent.”

The look Lord Blackwood shot at Ciel was packed with murderous intent. The man would probably turn out to be trouble later, but no doubt Ciel knew that and didn’t need Sieglinde to point it out to him. Sieglinde went back to sit next to Lizzie on the sofa, and she wriggled a hand between them to be able to hold Lizzie’s hand without being obvious about it. Lizzie glanced at her and smiled, blushing slightly. All day long, they’d tried to touch each other in as many little unobtrusive ways as possible, although their discretion was maybe unneeded here; the three men were so preoccupied that she wasn’t sure they would notice if Sieglinde and Lizzie kissed in front of them. But touching Lizzie and getting away with it was a game she couldn’t get tired of. Those little touches were maddening, promising more, and Sieglinde couldn’t wait until they finally had time to sort this out. Ciel didn’t act like he noticed anything, but Sieglinde doubted this had escaped his attention, as he was nothing if not observant. He held himself aloof, focusing on the task at hand, which made it hard to know what he thought of what had happened between them. Sieglinde knew that Lizzie was still scared that they’d pushed him too far, but this wasn’t something they could verify in their current circumstances. 

The current circumstances were all three sitting in chairs in view of the windows, for Ciel had declared it important that their murderer could easily ascertain their positions. Sieglinde, Lizzie and Ciel, as well as Sebastian, who almost faded into the shadows, had chosen their seats so that they wouldn’t be visible from the outside. All that remained to do for them was to wait, which only sounded simple in theory. The conversation wasn’t flowing between the occupants of the room, fear, anger, and wariness standing as obstacles between them. Sieglinde would have gladly ignored Lord Blackwood, Lord King, and Mr Hyde, and spoken only to Lizzie and Ciel, but the tension in the room was so thick that it stifled her words; also, the topic she wanted most to discuss with them wasn’t one that could be brought up in front of strangers. 

Lord King tugged at the collar of his shirt and looked mournfully at the roaring fire. “Am I the only one who’s feeling too hot? Must we keep that fire burning?”

No one answered him. Mr Hyde said, “How sure are we that the murderer will come tonight?”

“We’re sure of nothing,” Ciel said. He pressed a hand against his mouth and his chest had a small spasm from the cough he contained. “We’ll stay here for a few more hours, then you’ll go to bed as if nothing was amiss and we’ll go through this another time tomorrow night.”

“But then the murderer could just stab us in our beds!”

Ciel gave him a steady look. “We’ll protect your rooms, but I don’t think this is likely. This murderer doesn’t want you to die in your sleep. They want you to see death coming and know why it’s coming.”

This declaration made the three men look at Ciel with a growing wariness that Ciel superbly ignored. Quiet once again reigned in the room. Ciel looked like he was starting to nod off but then he shook his head to keep himself awake. 

“Did you hear this?” Lord King asked suddenly.

Sieglinde glanced at her board with the warning light bulbs. “No one has entered the house. It might be one of the servants.”

“The servants have been consigned to the servant quarters. Haven’t they, Rudolph?”

“Settle down, Arthur,” Mr Hyde said tiredly. “Panicking isn’t helping anything.”

“But I’m telling you that—”

One of the bulbs on the board lit up. Under a rush of adrenaline, Sieglinde half-rose from her seat, even though there wasn’t anything she should be doing. 

“Ground floor, one of the windows from the west wing,” she said. “They’re here.”

“Shouldn’t—shouldn’t someone go there and stop them?”

“We don’t separate and we don’t move from here,” Ciel said. He’d pulled out his gun; a sword had appeared in Lizzie’s hand like in a magic trick. “We can’t let them lead us on a wild chase throughout the house. We know they’re coming here.”

“Through the door, certainly,” Mr Hyde said. “Since they’re in the house, now.”

“Not necessarily,” Ciel said. “They could access one of the library’s windows from any of the other windows on the façade. We just need to stay calm and on alert. Do not move from your seats.”

Lord Blackwood gripped the arms of his chair and scowled, while Mr Hyde looked uncertain. Lord King, bearing the look of a hunted deer, got out of his seat and darted in direction of the door.

“Oh, for the love of—” Ciel groaned.

But, before Lord King could reach the door, Lizzie had leaped to him, and now held the tip of her blade against his throat. The man froze, shaking like a leaf. 

“You heard what my fiancé just said,” Lizzie said.

“Please,” he whimpered. “I just want to get out.”

“What the devil?” Lord Blackwood exclaimed. “Call back your little blond girl, Phantomhive. I thought your aim was to _protect_ us!”

“It is,” Ciel said, “but your friend is acting like a fool. Lord King, get back to your seat.”

A resounding crash drowned whatever squeaky response Lord King made. Sieglinde knew immediately where it had come from: second window on the left, the trap that had been triggered was supposed to upset the bookcase. Sieglinde looked in that direction, and saw that the intruder had somehow managed to avoid being buried under the piece of furniture. They’d only received a shower of books over the head and were already getting back to their feet. 

“Paul!” Lord King gasped.

The intruder turned in his direction. They wore a man’s clothing and the short blond hair was tied into a ponytail—only through close examination did Sieglinde manage to recognise Madame Edna’s features from her high cheekbones and the shape of her chin. Her three targets, though, seemed to be witnessing something else entirely. 

“Stay away!” Lord Blackwood shouted. “Phantomhive, keep him away!”

Madame Edna—or rather, Agnes Stewart—swiftly avoided the blade Lizzie sliced at her and she dashed across the room in direction of her targets. Sieglinde caught a glint of metal in her hand, and felt cold with fear when she saw Lizzie try to put herself into the woman’s path. The hint of metal, a knife blade, slashed through the air, but Lizzie was just as quick and she managed to dodge. Blackwood, King, and Hyde had clustered in a corner, watching the intruder fight Lizzie in terror. Ciel had stood up, holding his gun, but he couldn’t shoot without risking Lizzie. When Agnes Stewart shoved past Lizzie, avoiding her blade again, Ciel shouted, “Sebastian, get her!”

Sebastian, a flitting shadow in Sieglinde’s eyes, moved across the room in an instant and swooped on the intruder. After a moment of flailing, he managed to hold her to the ground, arms twisted behind her back. Ciel walked up to them, holding his gun nonchalantly. 

“This isn’t—it’s not Paul,” Mr Hyde said hesitantly. 

Ciel shot him a contemptuous look. “Of course not, you moron,” he said. “She just enhanced the resemblance to frighten you. Meet Agnes Stewart, Paul’s younger sister.”

“Paul had a sister?” Sieglinde heard Lord Blackwood murmur.

Agnes had heard too, because her face tightened in fury and she started struggling against Sebastian’s hold. 

“Yes, he did, you _murderer_!” she spat out. Sieglinde could now see that she had make-up around her eyes that made them look narrower. 

“You won’t manage to break my butler’s hold, Miss Stewart,” Ciel told her. “This is over for you.”

She turned her blazing gaze on him. “Why are you protecting them?” she asked, sounding accusatory. 

“I can’t very well let you go around and wreak havoc as you please,” Ciel said coolly.

“Is it because they’re of your kind?” she said, her eyes narrowed. “You, of all people, should understand me. You had a brother, too. Do you know what they’ve done?”

Ciel’s mouth twisted, betraying what a mistake Agnes had done by mentioning his brother. “I did, yes,” he said, his tone icy. “You _used_ him, made him into one of your grotesque ghost shows.”

“I meant no harm, I—”

“Didn’t you try to kill me too?”

“I just needed you out of my way,” she said, shaking her head impatiently. “But you have to see that my cause is just, and that they—”

“Just?” he said. “Don’t make me laugh. This was about revenge, not justice. I know that much. I know the difference. We’re no better than anyone else. Pain does not make us righteous.”

“What other choice did I have?” She sounded angry, an old, deep-rooted anger, but also desperate—not, Sieglinde thought, because she hoped they would be merciful, but because she wanted Ciel to understand her. Her eyes were fixed on him at the exclusion of everyone else in the room. “The police ruled out Paul’s death as an accident. I knew he thought that those four were up to no good before he died, but he’d never shared the details with me and I had no proof. There was nothing I could do against them.”

“What do you want me to say? You’ve played and you’ve lost. It’s as simple as that. Also, I wanted to tell you: your impersonation of my brother as he died was mediocre at best.”

She looked at him with hot, dark eyes, finally out of words. He turned on his heels, holding himself stiffly, but then was struck by a coughing fit. Sieglinde and Lizzie both hurried to his side, but there wasn’t much they could do beside wait for it to pass. 

“You’ve overdone it,” Sieglinde murmured to him, clinging to his shoulder. 

“Are you really—going to let them get away with what they’ve done?” Lizzie asked in the same tone, and even though she didn’t look at anyone but Ciel, it was obvious whom she meant. 

Ciel glanced at her, and when he’d managed to get his breathing under control, he said, “Oh, don’t worry about that.” Then he turned to Blackwood. “Have someone call the police to fetch her. Ask for Inspector Carmichael, he’ll be glad for that catch. Tell him order has been restored.”

His declaration made, he left the library without another look to Blackwood and his friends, or to Agnes Stewart, the fallen medium.

\---

They came back to the Royal Crescent deep in the night, and were welcomed by Paula and Wolfram, both frantic with anxiety albeit each in their own way. Paula threw her arms around her mistress’ neck while Wolfram grabbed Sieglinde by the shoulders and shook her.

“Young lady!” he shouted in German. “Are you all right?”

“I’m perfectly fine,” she said in English, her teeth rattling from his shaking. “But let me go, Wolfram, or I won’t be!”

Ciel started coughing and Sebastian ushered him to bed despite his protestations. Sieglinde and Lizzie, both nearly as exhausted, didn’t wait much before doing the same. In the morning, they received a visit from Inspector Carmichael, who looked positively radiant. 

“Lord Phantomhive, you honoured your reputation,” he said, his moustache vibrating with excitement. “Thank you greatly for your help. And for yours, my ladies,” he added, bowing to Sieglinde and Lizzie. “Miss Stewart is secured in our jail as we speak, and Lord Blackwood’s testimony about the assault is more than enough damning evidence. We found a wealth of disguises in her room that she probably used to do no good.”

“Probably spying on the police’s progresses, among other things,” Ciel said. “That’s how she found out that I was involved.”

“Well, it’s a relief to know that that poor unhinged woman is finally out of the streets. We also arrested Mr Morgan Miller on your recommendation—from the look of it the two of them were lovers, and he’s helped her get into houses.”

“Did you speak to Lady Pickering?” Sieglinde asked. “She was housing Madame Edna—Agnes Stewart, I mean.”

Inspector Carmichael, comfortably ensconced in a chair, made an unconcerned gesture. “She admitted knowing about the fraud,” he said, “but she knew nothing of the murders, of course.”

“Of course,” Ciel murmured. 

Sieglinde thought about the woman and her flamboyant manners, and despite knowing her very little she found herself hoping that she hadn’t known anything. Inspector Carmichael offered them another series of profuse thanks and then departed, a saunter to his steps. 

“It looks like a weight has been taken off his shoulders,” Sieglinde commented, amused. 

“He didn’t have to arrest anyone of importance,” Ciel said. “This is the best outcome he could hope for.”

They finished eating their breakfast, but on a silent accord didn’t leave the table after they were done. They looked at each other, gauging looks that lingered, heavy with meanings. When a few long minutes had passed with no one saying anything, Sieglinde decided that she couldn’t stand it anymore. Someone had to be the first to dare speaking up. 

“I love you,” she said, saying the words bluntly, with no embellishment. Ciel and Lizzie both looked at her mutedly, as if waiting for her to go on. “Both of you. I have for a long time, but you were going to be married and I didn’t want to create problems for you or between you.”

“You could never be a problem!” Lizzie said. “Tell her, Ciel. Even if you’d told us—”

Ciel looked at Sieglinde, his chin resting on his intertwined fingers, his one eye unreadable. “You’re not a problem,” he said. “But I am.”

Lizzie whipped her head to gape at him. “What? What are you saying, Ciel?”

“I know I’m not good at—at this,” he said, not looking at either of them. “Interpersonal feelings. Lizzie hasn’t much choice in the matter, but—”

“Stop it,” Lizzie said, and this was the angriest Sieglinde had ever heard her sound at Ciel. “Don’t talk as if I were merely following the decisions made for me. I know my own heart and I know what it wants.”

“I know my own heart, too,” Sieglinde said. 

He glanced at them, frowning as if he were annoyed, but Sieglinde thought it was rather his way of betraying uncertainty.

“What are you proposing we do?” he said. “I don’t know what way would allow everyone to have what they want.”

“The solution I propose is rather unconventional,” Sieglinde said, heartbeat quickening at the thought of what she was about to say. She knew her own heart but theirs were, by nature, partly shrouded to her. “There’s no reason to break off your engagement to Lizzie, if that was what you were trying to do. But in secret, the three of us, we could enter… some form of relationship. Be together like husband and wife… wives… but, unknown to the rest of the world.”

Lizzie and Ciel were blushing, both so adorably that Sieglinde wanted to jump at their necks and clutch them to her heart. But the moment was a serious one, and she mustn’t do anything to ruin it. 

“But,” Lizzie said, “this seems unfair to you. If Ciel and I marry, where does that leave you?”

“And what if you were to be proposed matrimony yourself?” Ciel said. “This has a lot of potential to ruin you.”

“Let me worry about this. I don’t care for marriage. I only care about my work and about the two of you, whichever way you want me. The only question is whether you want what I offer or not.”

Lizzie waited only a short moment before grasping for Sieglinde’s hand. “This is scary,” she said. “But, but I want it. What about you, Ciel?”

Sieglinde waited for Ciel’s answer with trepidation. He looked at Sieglinde and Lizzie’s linked hands, impenetrable as ever, and Sieglinde wished she could have a hint of what he was thinking. Would he say yes because Lizzie had said she wanted it? Would he say no and take Lizzie back with him? It was hard to fathom Lizzie agreeing to such a commitment if Ciel didn’t. 

“I want you to be happy,” he said, finally. “I want both of you to be happy.”

“But would it make _you_ happy?” Sieglinde said. _I want you to want_ me _too_. 

“Yes,” he said, a hint of vulnerability in his eye. “Yes, Sieglinde.”

It was the first time he’d ever called her by name, and it hit her harder that if he’d grabbed her for a kiss—not that she could imagine Ciel ever doing this. Lizzie made a happy squealing sound and took Ciel’s hand, then nudged him so he would take Sieglinde’s and they would all be linked to each other in a circle. The mood had turned giddy and Sieglinde wanted to laugh, and Lizzie’s happy face across the table echoed her feelings. Even Ciel had stopped looking so severe and guarded. 

“I’m sorry,” he said after a moment, and Sieglinde’s heart skipped a beat. “There’s something I want to do before we leave town. I’ll be back soon.”

“Oh,” Lizzie said. “Well, we’ll need to go say goodbye to Flora and her brother, anyway.”

“Give them my regards.” 

He stood up to leave the room, but when he was almost at the door he turned around, paused for a few seconds and then went back to Lizzie and kissed her on the cheek. He walked around the table and did the same to Sieglinde, the brush of his lips against her skin so quick that she might as well have imagined it. 

He was gone just as quickly, awkward and furtive. Sieglinde and Lizzie looked at each other, and laughed in surprise and delight at the strange boy they both loved, holding hands and then drawing closer for a kiss. 

\---

The creeping morning found Lord Rudolph Blackwood sipping whiskey in his library after a sleepless night, in company of his friends Benjamin Hyde and Arthur King. All three of them still alive, which wasn’t something Rudolph would have bet on when they had elaborated this mad plan in the afternoon. 

“I think you misjudged Lord Phantomhive, Rudolph,” Benjamin said. “I think he only wanted to help us.”

He was in a most unusual state of undress, in his shirtsleeves and with his collar open. He and Arthur both looked almost obscenely relieved, whereas Rudolph couldn’t shake an undercurrent of unease.

“Help us?” he said. “Don’t make me laugh. Didn’t you see how amused that brat was at the situation?”

“Whatever his reasons, he did save our lives,” Benjamin insisted. “You have to acknowledge that much.”

“Yes, and don’t think he won’t hold this over our heads for the next few decades! I’ve heard rumours about the Phantomhives; they’re a devious bloodline, and it looks like our young earl is made of the same cloth as the rest of his dead family.”

“Also, he _knows_ ,” Arthur murmured, fear replacing relief on his face.

“And he could have shared what he knows with the police, but he didn’t,” Benjamin said. “I think the two of you are blowing this out of proportions. We’re safe, and we deserve a moment to savour it after everything that happened.”

“You are a fool,” Rudolph said cuttingly. “You’re too naïve. What we need to do is get rid of the brat, and—”

“Lord Blackwood, you wound me.”

The sound of that young, familiar voice at a most unexpected moment had Rudolph’s heart stop in his chest for an instant. He turned his head, and saw Lord Phantomhive sitting on the edge of one open window, his legs crossed and his chin propped on his fist. Next to him stood that dark butler of his, looking cool and unbothered. 

Arthur was the one who found his voice first, for once. “Dear God, what—Lord Phantomhive, what are you doing here? How did you come in here?”

“The ‘how’ is closely related to the ‘what’, interestingly,” said Lord Phantomhive in a musing voice. “But I’m getting ahead of myself.”

“Explain yourself, Phantomhive,” Rudolph commanded, his hand creeping in direction of the bell at his side.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Lord Blackwood,” the boy said. “I see that I have frightened you all, but I promise you that I don’t mean to do you any physical harm for the moment.”

For the _moment_? Where did the brat find all that reserve of arrogance? He may have been a devious little monster, and Rudolph did fear the harm he could do by making certain things public, but if it came down to a brawl Rudolph felt confident that the odds were in their favour. Phantomhive was but a slip of a boy and his butler wasn’t built very impressively. And if everything else failed, they were in Rudolph’s own home and he could call on his servants to help. 

Feeling comforted by the thought, Rudolph said, “What do you want then? Be quick about it.”

“Since you’re asking, my lord, I’m here because I felt that there were some things we needed to discuss openly so there wouldn’t be any—misunderstanding between us. From what I just heard, this is also what you want.” He slipped from where he was perched and stepped further in the room, arms crossed behind his back. “You see, the day we played cards together I felt some undue hostility toward me coming from you, Lord Blackwood. And later, you hired men to try and scare me out of town—oh, don’t look at me like this, I know it was you. I just couldn’t understand what it was about.”

Rudolph felt a surge of anger. “Oh, come on, stop playing. Of course, you—”

“I am being perfectly genuine. I only vaguely remembered the four of you, and I was very frustrated that you seemed to think I remembered more. Lord King assumed the same, when I spoke to him on another day.” Rudolph saw Arthur squirm in discomfort. What was that about? “How vexatious for me not to have the knowledge you thought I possessed! I tried and tried to remember, but got nothing. Until I realised that you’d made a mistake that many people before you had made.”

“What do you mean?” Benjamin asked.

Lord Phantomhive smiled, if that savage grimace could be called a smile. Rudolph felt his unease come back to him without understanding why. The butler, still standing by the window, could have been an ominous statue for all he moved. Only his eyes followed his master, keen and watchful, waiting for an order to spring into action. 

“You mistook me for my brother,” Lord Phantomhive said softly. “He was the one who was curious about you, who followed you around.”

“A mistake? No, that can’t be,” Rudolph said. He was sure that the annoying one had been called ‘Ciel.’ The little pest had always been underfoot, wanting to ‘play’ with them, as if they’d had time to waste on a seven-year-old.

“And yet it is, my lord,” Phantomhive said. “I never had any interest in you; my brother did. You carried about you an air of secret and mystery that was too tempting for the curious child he was. One day, he came back from one of his adventures and wouldn’t tell me about it. He always told me everything he did and saw when we were apart, but not that day. I was vexed at the time, thinking that he was keeping a fun secret to himself, but I understand now that this wasn’t the reason.”

Walter had been the one who’d found the little boy hiding behind a bush. He’d grabbed him by the collar and dragged him out, and then they’d given him a good scare with their glowing faces and hands. _Don’t tell anyone what you saw tonight, or we will kill you in your bed, you and everyone you’ve told!_

“You threatened him,” Phantomhive went on as though he’d managed to see the memory play in Rudolph’s head. He sounded angry, now, each of his words shot out like a bullet. “A seven-year-old boy who thought you were only playing a game. You terrified him into silence! And later you killed Paul Stewart because he knew what you were doing too, but he was an adult and not so easily scared.”

“It was an accident!” Arthur blurted out like the idiot he was. “We didn’t mean to kill him!”

“I’m not going to denounce you,” Phantomhive said, sounding cool again. “I have no proof, and no desire to deal with the uproar that would follow my accusations. I have merely come to tell you a secret of mine, actually, one that is known by no living soul. Since I know your secret, it seemed only fair.”

Benjamin and Arthur exchanged looks with Rudolph, sharing their confusion. But Rudolph felt no confusion, only a dread that spread from his heart to his whole body in chilling waves. Lord Phantomhive walked up to him, taking his time, the smile of a malevolent imp on his face. 

“You asked me a question, once, Lord Blackwood,” he said. “You asked what it felt like, if I remember your words, ‘to be the only half left of a whole.’” He was standing right in front of Rudolph now and he leaned forward until their faces were very close to each other, still smiling in that awful way. He started to untie the knot holding his eye-patch in place. “I’m going to answer you now, my lord: it makes me feel _vengeful_.”

The eye-patch fell from his face and revealed Lord Phantomhive’s hidden eye. Rudolph gasped at the sight: the iris was a vivid shade of purple, and, impossibly, it looked like an esoteric pattern was drawn there. The mismatched eyes gave Lord Phantomhive an otherworldly look.

“Sebastian,” the boy murmured. “Give them a taste of what happens to the ones who cross me. That is an order.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Unable to look away from Lord Phantomhive’s strange eye, Rudolph didn’t realise at first what was happening. Only when he heard Benjamin and Arthur cry out in fear did he look around him and saw that the room was now almost completely dark, as though a veil had covered the windows. Shadows writhed along the walls, over the portraits and the bookcases, moving like elongated arms reaching out for Rudolph and his friends. Rudolph looked over Lord Phantomhive’s shoulder and saw the butler by the window, one tall human-like shadow with two gleaming ruby-red eyes. Rudolph’s mouth was too dry to scream. 

“I want the three of you to see my secret and to know what power I hold. For the rest of your lives I want you to feel our eyes on the back of your neck and to know that one day, maybe, we will come for you.”

The shadows became suddenly frantic and then rushed toward them. Finally, Rudolph found in himself the strength to scream.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A Shilling’s Worth of Magic Fanart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16499387) by [PolkaDotDragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PolkaDotDragon/pseuds/PolkaDotDragon)




End file.
